Northanger Abbey
A young woman who has read too many Gothic novels goes to Bath, meets a man who teases her, and then visits an abbey where she expects something terrible to happen. Austen wrote the book early and sold it late, and it still carries the energy of a parody written by someone who loved the form she was mocking.
Catherine Morland is not witty like Elizabeth Bennet; she is naive, and the novel lets her be embarrassed rather than punishing her for it. The Bath chapters are the best account we have of what a young woman without money actually did with her days in 1800.
Public-domain status
First published in 1817. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Jane Austen died in 1817, so this work has been free to republish there since 1888.
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Keep reading
- Bleak House — Charles Dickens, 1853
- Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens, 1838
- New Grub Street — George Gissing, 1891
- The Way We Live Now — Anthony Trollope, 1875
- Bath — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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