Penguin Books</br></br>Product Description</br></br><p><b>Austen's witty exploration of the perils of mistaking fiction for reality</b><br><br>During an eventful season at Bath young na?ve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella who shares Catherine's love of Gothic romance and horror and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney who invite her to their father's mysterious house Northanger Abbey. There her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine this is the most youthful and and optimistic of Jane Austen's works.<br><br>For more than seventy years Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1700 titles Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning tr"nslators.<br></p></br></br>Amazon.com Review</br></br>Though <I>Northanger Abbey</I> is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels?? it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as <I>Pride and Prejudice</I>?? <I>Emma</I>?? and <I>Sense and Sensibility</I>. Of all her novels?? this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it?? Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's <I>The Mysteries of Udolpho</I>. Decrepit castles?? locked rooms?? mysterious chests?? cryptic notes?? and tyrannical fathers all figure into <I>Northanger Abbey</I>?? but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that " had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy?? would have supposed her born to be an heroine."The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence?? besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters."Furthermore?? her mother does <I>not</I> die giving birth to her?? and Catherine herself?? far from engaging in " more heroic enjoyments of infancy?? nursing a dormouse?? feeding a canary-bird?? or watering a rose-bush"stly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes. <p> Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor?? who invite her