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Catherine, a seventeen year old girl, travels with her family to Bath and makes many new acquaintance, including two young men who pursue her. She is invited to visit the country estate of one, and makes the journey with high expectations of Gothic drama, her head being full of Mrs Radcliffe's The Mystery of Udolpho.
This was the first novel completed by Austen, but was only published posthumously. It is a delightful, light-hearted comment by Austen on the reading and writing of novels.
upstairsgirl: This is the book that Austen's heroine is reading (and which Austen is wryly mocking) in Northanger Abbey. Fun to read with each other; Udolpho is possibly less fun on its own.
This was Austen’s first completed novel, though it wasn’t published until after her death. It’s a satire of Gothic novels that were popular at the time. Catherine Morland is a very sweet but naive heroine who’s in love with Gothic novels, and she lets her overactive imagination get the better of her.
I laughed at the little jabs Austen took at things a Gothic heroine needs, but where Catherine was lacking, like, “There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door — not one young man whose origin was unknown.” (Reminds me of Heathcliff.)
This is another Chiltern edition that I have, though I highly recommend the audiobook performed by Juliet Stevenson. Now I want to read the book that Catherine was so obsessed with, The Mysteries of Udolpho. ( )
Every time I pick up another [a:Jane Austen|1265|Jane Austen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1380085320p2/1265.jpg] book, I am even more amazing by what an incredibly observant person she was. She hit human nature on the head. You can easily sort through the language and realize she's identifying personalities that are still alive and well today. Not good ones, per say, but ones that are still common.
And I love Catherine. She's silly and young and easily swayed. She doesn't know some of the conveniences and ways of how she's supposed to act and is making her way in the world a little alone - her brother is easily taken in by a brother and sister group and Catherine goes along.
I love imagining the times and how all the story played out. I cringed and laughed and awww'd at all the experiences that Catherine goes through. for such a short book, it's really full of a lot of adventures.
What would be considered a romantic Rom Com in today’s Reading world, Northanger Abbey is more a fanciful, whimsical read that really didn't do anything for me. I am more a fan of the Bronte sisters as feel their novels are more intense and atmospheric whereas Austen tends to be more lighthearted and romantic in my opinion.
I came across this on Audible Original narrated by Emma Thompson and stuck for something to listen to on a car journey I figured I would give it a try. Unfortunately this was in performance style and was like listening to a play which doesn’t work for me, however I stuck with it to the end as it wasn't the worst book I ever listened to but this may have been down to Emma Thomson’s performance as on of the narrator.
A coming of age story about 17 year old Catherine Moreland who on a trip to Bath meets and falls in love with Henry Tilley a handson young clergyman. . I understand that this was one of her first novels and she may not have intended on having it published. It’s a satire of the popular gothic fiction of Austen’s day.
Another Classic crossed off my TBR list but not a book for my favourites shelf.( )
An easy and fun read. I enjoyed the way Jane Austen explored using three methods of communicating with the audience: narration, dialogue, and free indirect discourse. The book as greater depth if you spend a little time understanding the historical setting with Gothic novels and novels in general as she plays on those notions. ( )
No one who ever had seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.
Quotations
"Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
...but while I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable.
Young people do not like to be always thwarted.
Give me but a little cheerful company, let me only have the company of the people I love, let me be where I like and with whom I like, and the devil may take the rest
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them.
...no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared...
Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding--joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all--it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs--the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books. [on reading history]
To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
...if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad...
... why he should say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood?
But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate? By what means could it have been so long concealed? And how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. … The housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight o'clock the next day was the sound which first roused Catherine; and she opened her eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning had succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manuscript; and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid's going away, she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much less than she had supposed it to be at first. Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball. And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramp line, "To poultice chestnut mare"—a farrier's bill! Such was the collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her night's rest! She felt humbled to the dust.
Last words
To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.
This LT work, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, is the original form of this novel. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey [ISBN 1854598376] is a dramatization of this work by Tim Luscombe. Please do not combine the two; thank you.
Catherine, a seventeen year old girl, travels with her family to Bath and makes many new acquaintance, including two young men who pursue her. She is invited to visit the country estate of one, and makes the journey with high expectations of Gothic drama, her head being full of Mrs Radcliffe's The Mystery of Udolpho.
This was the first novel completed by Austen, but was only published posthumously. It is a delightful, light-hearted comment by Austen on the reading and writing of novels.
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Book description
Catherine, at seventeen, is an insatiable reader of 'horrid' novels full of villainous monks, secret corridors and blameless heroines. So, when, during an eventful visit to Bath, she is invited to the Tilneys' family home, Northanger Abbey, her cup is full. The quizzical Henry Tilney embarrasses her by guessing at her vivid speculations and she fears that she has lost his good opinion for ever. Just as she begins to hope again, his father inexplicably banishes her.... In a lively novel, portraying social life in fashionable Bath and the terrors of an imposing country house, Jane Austen exposes the dangers of an over-active imagination, of mistaken ideals and of bad faith. But while Catherine's youthful blunders are treated with reconciling good humour, hypocrisy, avarice and social climbing are unmercifully delineated in this joyously incisive love story.
Haiku summary
They cannot escape, the single page of pride which always lies open (alsoCass)
Not a heroine. Her love lives in an abbey — still, Nothing gothic here. (By Muscogulus)
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Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - lyzard tutoring SqueakyChu
Wikipedia in English (1)
5
I laughed at the little jabs Austen took at things a Gothic heroine needs, but where Catherine was lacking, like, “There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door — not one young man whose origin was unknown.” (Reminds me of Heathcliff.)
This is another Chiltern edition that I have, though I highly recommend the audiobook performed by Juliet Stevenson. Now I want to read the book that Catherine was so obsessed with, The Mysteries of Udolpho. (