Jane Austen’s ‚Northanger Abbey‘ took a meandering course toward publication. Originally written in 1803 as a satire of the popular Gothic novels of the day, the book was not published until after Austen’s death in 1817.
The story concerns seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, who has lived her entire life in the small village of Fullerton with her parents and nine siblings. This sedate (and frankly boring) life is upended when Catherine receives an invitation to visit the resort city of Bath and thus break out of her humdrum existence. But Catherine’s view of the world is based solely on the Gothic novels she obsessively consumes and, during this trip (where she meets and is courted by the charming Henry Tinley), she swiftly learns a number of important differences between truth and fiction.
What follows is a beautiful and fascinating tale of romance, intrigue and first love in a book that has become one of the most popular and celebrated works of the 19th century. Jane Austen’s ‚Northanger Abbey‘ is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
Über den Autor
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist known best for her six major novels: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. Jane was one of eight children born to the Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh Austen. The family struggled financially for much of Jane’s life but she received a varied – if brief – education both privately and at a small boarding school before the financial strain of her education precluded her continued attendance. Once she returned from school, Jane rarely left her family home. From an early age, Jane wrote poetry and short fiction. She eventually expanded her writing into full-length novels and published four of them during her lifetime, all of them anonymously (as was the fashion for female writers at the time). These were: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). They generated a small amount of interest and a smattering of positive reviews, but Austen was not recognized as the celebrated and groundbreaking author she is considered today while she was alive. Jane became ill in 1816 but apparently ignored the warning signs of whatever disease had gripped her. Some speculate she had lymphoma, others believe it was Addison’s disease. Whatever the cause, Jane’s health deteriorated and she died on July 18, 1817 at the age of 41. Following her death, her final two novels -Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published (both in 1818), but it was not until the mid-1800’s that her work began to gain in popularity. Jane Austen is now considered one of the world’s most beloved writers and her face has appeared on everything from postage stamps to British currency. In July, 2017, a statue of Jane was erected in Basingstoke, Hampshire on the 200th anniversary of her death.
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