Northanger Abbey

So the discussion has begun! And our heroine has already stolen our hearts! Catherine Morland-A 17-year-old girl who loves reading Gothic novels. Something of a tomboy in her childhood, she is wrongly worried that she isn't beautiful enough, until men start to take an interest in her at the assembly dances. Catherine lacks experience and sees her life as if she were a heroine in a Gothic novel. What a timely topic, and book to be reading in the twilight hours of an autumnal October, evenings of lengthening shadows and falling leaves that rustle on the air.

Northanger Abbey

I am becoming an avid fan of Jane Austen and am joining a small reading group dedicated to her works along with her contemporaries. We will begin by reading and discussing Northanger Abbey. I researched abbies in Austen Country- Hampshire, and dicovered this beautiful monastery, Mottisfont.


To read about it go here.
Now about Northanger Abbey: According to Wikipedia, "Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan (as it was first called) was written about the years 1798-1799.
Northanger Abbey 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 decided against publishing the novel. The bookseller 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. 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."