The World's Classics - 355: Northanger Abbey

More about the book

Northanger Abbey, which was published with persuasion in four volumes, was written about 1798 or 1799, probably under the title "Susan." In 1803 the manuscript of "Susan" was sold to the publisher Richard Crosby, who advertised for it, but unaccountably it was not published at that time. The novel combines a satire on conventional novels of polite society with one on gothic tales of terror. Catherine Moreland, the daughter of a country parson, is the innocent abroad who gains worldly wisdom: first in the fashionable society of Bath and then at Northanger Abbey itself, where she learns not to interpret the world through her reading of gothic thrillers.