Books : Northanger Abbey (Dover Thrift Editions)

Northanger Abbey (Dover Thrift Editions)

View Shopping Cart or Checkout

Northanger Abbey (Dover Thrift Editions)

by: Jane Austen

Amazon.com's Price: $3.50

as of 05/23/2012 18:47 EDT

Used Price: $0.01
Collectible Price: $3.32
Third Party New Price: $1.02

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

Binding: Paperback
Brand: Dover Publications
EAN: 9780486414126
Edition: Unabridged
ISBN: 0486414124
Item Dimensions: 5183231518
Label: Dover Publications
Languages: EnglishUnknownEnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
MPN: 9780486414126
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: October 03, 2000
Publisher: Dover Publications
Studio: Dover Publications

Related Items:

Editorial Review:

Product Description:

In this spirited comedy of manners, Catherine Morland falls in love with a young clergyman while vacationing in Bath, and his father, thinking her wealthy, invites her to be a guest at Northanger Abbey, the family's country estate. But things take a turn for the worse when it's discovered that she is not wealthy.

Amazon.com Review:
Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.

Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: none

Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display

Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Abraham, Adam, David, Isaac, Job, Joseph, Judith, Moses

Informative site dedictated to god, religion and ethics

Northanger Abbey (Dover Thrift Editions)

Northanger Abbey (Dover Thrift Editions)

Books by Joseph Ratzinger

Catholic Books

Books about Jesus

Books about Orthodoxy

Books about Mormonism

Books about Evangelism

Books about Protestantism

Books about Buddhism