Northanger Abbey is both an ingenious Gothic parody and a realistic portrait of the social
education of a naive young girl in late eighteenth-century England. Conceived in the 1790s but
not published until after Jane Austen's death the novel straddles the style of her childhood
writings with their playful mockery of contemporary fiction and the later mature works which
probe both society and individual psychology. It paints a wonderfully dense picture of the
material and social conditions of genteel English life in town and country. Through the young
naïve heroine the reader experiences the popular delight in escapist and sensational fiction
typical of the period. The novel invites us to enjoy being laughed at for our own fictional
expectations while happily fulfilling most of them. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied
by Janet Todd illuminate cultural historical and literary context bringing Jane Austen's
world to life.
