Northanger Abbey (Vintage Editions)

Although published posthumously, this was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication. Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. She is immersed in the world of attentive men and elaborate balls. But when one her suitors takes her to his family estate, Northanger Abbey, she becomes lost in the gothic mystery which surrounds it. Northanger Abbey is fundamentally a parody of Gothic fiction. Austen turns the conventions of 18th century novels on their head, by making her heroine a plain and undistinguished girl from a middle-class family, allowing the heroine to fall in love with the hero before he has a serious thought of her, and exposing the heroine's romantic fears and curiosities as groundless. This unabridged edition is a must-read for Austen fans.