This was the year of Jane Austen, and I dutifully read and re-read all her books for her big 250th birthday. I started the project like a task, but oh-so-quickly got pulled into obsession. As in personal hygiene omitting level of obsession.
Of course I loved Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma... but my favorite of these ended up being her quietest novel, the gothic Northanger Abbey. I felt Austen's wry humor here more than her other books, her biting personality creeping in between the words. By the end, I felt I knew the author as well as her characters.
Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent.
Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her.
In this, her first full-length novel, Austen also fixes her sharp, ironic gaze on other kinds of contemporary novel, especially the Gothic school made famous by Ann Radcliffe. Catherine's reading becomes intertwined with her…
