The penultimate edition in Folio’s Jane Austen series, this volume is bound in gold cloth, and the slipcase reproduces the work’s spirited first line. Witty, fresh and perceptive, the images perfectly reflect Austen’s wonderfully sardonic novel. Jonathan Burton has contributed six colour illustrations, depicting both the ballrooms of Bath and the imposing Abbey. As Val McDermid writes in her introduction – a heartfelt account of how Northanger Abbey has reinvented itself for her with each rereading – ‘Austen unfailingly provides us with the opportunity to investigate our own lives and find surprising truths there.’ Just as Austen’s talent for satire exposes the failings of the overwrought gothic novels of the age, her subtle, beautifully observed portrait of Bath society reveals the real value of fiction: its power to convey ‘the most thorough knowledge of human nature’. But the tongue-in-cheek tone that characterises the story belies the skill of a truly great writer flexing her creative muscles. Simply told in lively and elegant prose, this is Austen’s most playful work. The last of Austen’s novels to be published, appearing posthumously in 1818, Northanger Abbey was the first to be completed, written when Austen was in her early twenties. The novel makes reference to real life locations, such as the Upper and Lower Rooms in Bath and Blaise Castle.‘Somehow, Austen had the insight and skill to delineate life beyond her years and her experience.’ When avid reader Catherine Morland is invited to Northanger Abbey, she expects that her experiences there will mirror those of a heroine in a Gothic novel. The novel was published posthumously in December 1817. Following Jane's death in July 1817, he supervised its publication. Her brother Henry bought back the rights from Crosby & Co in 1816. Northanger Abbey is a perfectly aimed literary parody that is also a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among.

They decided against publishing the book, however, which confused and angered her, and they did not allow her to reclaim the manuscript. Jane Austen sold Northanger Abbey (then titled Susan) to Crosby & Co for £10 in 1803. There, Catherine finds herself swept up in new acquaintances and Gothic plots as she enters society and attempts to fulfil her would be role as a sentimental heroine. Her happy but all together unremarkable life is interrupted when her wealthy neighbours, the Allens, offer to have her accompany them to Bath where Mr Allen plans to seek treatment for his poor health. Catherine Morland, eldest daughter of a respectable clergyman, is seventeen and absorbed in novels and the Gothic genre.