Recommendations
Books Like Northanger Abbey
Best books to read after Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Jane Austen's Gothic parody is the most formally playful of her novels — a satire of Ann Radcliffe-style Gothic fiction that also illuminates real social danger and educates its heroine in how to read both books and people. These recommendations extend the experience through Austen's other novels, the Gothic tradition she was parodying, and the tradition of women's fiction she transformed.
- 1Buy
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
The natural companion — Pride and Prejudice is Austen's most immediately appealing novel and the best entry into her mature work; Elizabeth Bennet shares Catherine Morland's education in reading people correctly, but with more initial confidence and more to unlearn.
- 2Buy
Emma
by Jane Austen
Austen's most technically accomplished novel and the most systematic exploration of the theme of misreading — Emma Woodhouse is convinced she can read everyone correctly, and the novel's comedy depends on showing how wrong she is; the companion to Northanger Abbey's education in correct reading.
- 3Buy
The Mysteries of Udolpho
by Ann Radcliffe
The novel Catherine Morland is reading in Northanger Abbey — the exemplary Gothic novel that Austen was parodying; the best way to understand what Austen was doing is to read what she was responding to, and Radcliffe's novel is genuinely atmospheric and suspenseful despite its supernatural machinery.
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Evelina
by Fanny Burney
Austen's most important predecessor — Burney's epistolary novel about a young woman's entrance into society was the model for Austen's approach to the social novel, and reading Evelina alongside Northanger Abbey shows exactly how Austen transformed and deepened the tradition.
- 5Buy
Persuasion
by Jane Austen
Austen's final novel and the most emotionally mature — Anne Elliot is the opposite of Catherine Morland in many ways (older, more experienced, less naive), but shares the theme of learning to trust correct reading of character over social convention; a perfect companion volume.
- 6Buy
The Female Quixote
by Charlotte Lennox
The direct predecessor to Northanger Abbey's satirical project — Lennox's 1752 novel about Arabella, a young woman who has read too many French romances and expects the world to operate according to their conventions, is the template that Austen adapted and transformed; essential context.
- 7Buy
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
Austen's most morally serious novel and the one that contrasts most sharply with Northanger Abbey's lightness — Fanny Price is the moral opposite of Catherine Morland in her passivity and seriousness; together the two novels define the range of Austen's heroines.
- 8Buy
Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
Austen's first published novel (like Northanger Abbey, an early work revised for publication) — the contrast between Elinor and Marianne Dashwood explores the same question that Northanger Abbey explores in Catherine: how do we learn to read feeling and situation correctly?
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