Northanger Abbey

Austen’s earliest novel, Northanger Abbey is one of those novels that started to criticize the most famous genre of eighteenth century- the Gothic novel. Written in response to contemporary fiction, it exhibits the most visibly comic relation to that fiction of all Austen’s full-length works. An eminent critic Jan Fergus says: “It insists on pointing up, and treating comically, the incongruities between literature and life, and the tendencies of novels to imitate each other rather than life.” Begun as a satire on the improbable plots and characters of the typical Gothic novel, Northanger Abbey developed into a treatment of Austen’s favourite theme, the initiation of a young woman into the complexities of adult social life. An adaptation of Northanger Abbey with screenplay by Andrew Davies, was shown on ITV on 25th March 2007 as part of their “Jane Austen Season”. This adaptation is aired on PBS in the United States as part of the “Complete Jane Austen” on Master Piece in January, 2008.

Northanger Abbey, though published posthumously, was probably the first to be completed, in the nearest to its original form. It belongs with Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice to an early period of writing, though all three were revised in later life, after the author had moved in 1809, with her widowed mother and her sister, to Chawton, the Hampshire home of her father’s brother, who had come into riches. The novel was written by Austen in 1798, revised for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year for £10 to a London bookseller, Crosby & Co., who after allowing it to remain for many years on his shelves, was content to sell it back to the novelist's brother, Henry Austen, for the exact sum that he had paid for it at the beginning, not knowing that the writer was already the author of four popular novels. In March 1817 (Letter 141) Jane told Fanny Knight: “Miss Catherine is put upon the Shelve for the present, and I do not know that she will ever come out.”The novel was further revised before being brought out posthumously in late December 1817 (1818 given on the title-page), as the first two volumes of a four-volume set with Persuasion.