'...in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.'

Northanger Abbey is about the misadventures of Catherine Morland, young, ingenuous, and mettlesome, and an indefatigable reader of gothic novels.  Their romantic excess and dark overstatement feed her imagination, as tyrannical fathers and diabolical villains work their evil on forlorn heroines in isolated settings.  What could be more remote from the uneventful securities of life in the midland counties of England?  Yet as Austen brilliantly contrasts fiction with reality, ordinary life takes a more sinister turn, and edginess and circumspection are reaffirmed alongside comedy and literary burlesque.

Also including Austen's other short fictions, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, this valuable new edition examines the ambitious and innovative works with which she inaugurated as well as closed her career.

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Features

• The best-value edition, combining Northanger Abbey with three minor works, two early, one late, showing her originality across the full range of her career.
• New introduction by Claudia L. Johnson reassesses received opinion about Northanger Abbey at the level of style as well as theme, and addresses recent critics as well as long established ones.  Integrates for the first time the shorter, less-discussed works into the argument.
• Reset text has crisper appearance.
• New, up-to-date bibliography, and new chronology by General Editor Vivien Jones (University of Leeds).
• New and extensive notes in particular draw attention to the many subtle parodies of the Gothic genre.
• Appendices on social rank and dancing further contextualize the works.

ABOUT THE SERIES

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Introduction
Gothic or Anti-Gothic?
Jane Austen, Irony, and Gothic Style
Northanger Abbey in Relation to Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon
Note on the text
Select Bibliography
Letters and Biography
Historical and Literary Contexts
Critical Works on Jane Austen
Critical Works on Northanger Abbey
Critical Works on Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon
Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics
A Chronology of Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey
Advertisement, by the Authoress, to Northanger Abbey *
Lady Susan
Conclusion
The Watsons
Sanditon
Appendix A Rank and Social Status
Appendix B Dancing
Textual Notes
Northanger Abbey
Explanatory Notes
Sources and Abbreviations
Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

Claudia L. Johnson, Professor of English at Princeton University, Edited by John Davie, formerly Principal Lecturer in English, Nottingham Trent University, and James Kinsley