Reading Order
Northanger AbbeyNorthanger Abbey Reading Order
Northanger Abbey (1803, published 1817) by Jane Austen is the most formally playful of her novels and the clearest expression of her relationship to the literary tradition she inherited and transformed. Catherine Morland is a young woman of seventeen, the daughter of a clergyman, who goes to Bath with neighbors and meets Henry Tilney, the man she will eventually marry, and Isabella Thorpe, her false friend. She is also an enthusiastic reader of Gothic novels — particularly Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho — and when she visits Henry's family home at Northanger Abbey she begins to imagine it as the scene of Gothic horror. The Gothic fantasies are gently deflated by the novel's comic irony, but Austen's satire is not simply aimed at Catherine: the novel also satirizes the actual horrors that can be found in real life (social cruelty, mercenary marriages, parental tyranny) and suggests that in some respects Catherine is not wrong to suspect that the Tilneys are capable of something like what she imagined. Northanger Abbey is the lightest of Austen's novels and the one that most directly shows her reading and her critique of her literary predecessors.
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Northanger Abbey (1817)
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Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen·1817
Northanger Abbey — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Northanger Abbey a Gothic parody?
Yes — but a gentle and affectionate one. Austen had read Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and other Gothic novels with pleasure, and her parody of the genre is more an exercise in realistic deflation than a hostile attack. Catherine's Gothic fantasies about Northanger Abbey are consistently shown to have real-life equivalents — not supernatural murder but the ordinary cruelties of a man like General Tilney, who is motivated by money and social calculation rather than Gothic villainy. Austen's point is that real human behavior is more disturbing than Gothic fiction's supernatural machinery, once you learn to read it correctly.
Who is Henry Tilney?
Henry Tilney is the hero of Northanger Abbey — one of Austen's most intellectually engaging male characters, and the one who most directly serves as a kind of ironic narrator within the novel. He educates Catherine about Gothic fiction, about landscape, and about how to read people — and his education of her is also a form of courtship. He is witty, self-aware, and capable of teasing in a way that Austen's other heroes (Darcy, Knightley, Wentworth) are not. Some readers find him the most charming of Austen's heroes; others find his pedagogical manner slightly condescending. He is also the hero who explicitly articulates the novel's central argument about the difference between Gothic fantasy and real social danger.
Why was Northanger Abbey published posthumously?
Northanger Abbey was written in 1798-99 (as 'Susan') and sold to the publisher Crosby & Co. in 1803 for ten pounds. Crosby agreed to publish it but did not, and it sat in his possession for thirteen years. Austen's brother Henry eventually bought it back in 1816 for the same price. Austen died in July 1817, and the novel was published posthumously in December 1817, along with Persuasion, in a four-volume set. The delay meant that its Gothic parody was somewhat dated by publication — the Gothic fashion had peaked in the 1790s and early 1800s — but the novel's more general concerns (the education of a young reader, the social world of Bath, the nature of courtship) were as relevant as ever.
In what order should I read Austen's novels?
There is no required order. Austen's novels are all self-contained and can be read in any sequence. The most common first choice is Pride and Prejudice, which is Austen's most immediately accessible and most widely read novel; Emma is often recommended second for readers who want more depth and complexity. Northanger Abbey is a good early choice for readers interested in Austen's literary self-awareness and her relationship to the Gothic tradition. Persuasion is the most emotionally mature and the most admired by many readers as her finest work. Mansfield Park is the most challenging and divisive. Sense and Sensibility is the most conventional in structure but has its own pleasures. All six novels reward reading and re-reading.
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