Northanger Abbey
, Austen's first novel completed for publication, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, a passionate and headstrong young woman with a fondness for Gothic novels. Away from home for the first time in her life, and with only her reading to guide her, Catherine finds herself suddenly thrown into the adult world-a world bristling with possible intrigue, romance, and suspense.
can be enjoyed as a parody of the Gothic romance novels in vogue at the time Austen began her own writing career. Or it can be savored as a delightful comedy of manners and a cautionary tale. For in the education of Catherine Morland, the novel explores the mercurial relationship between appearance and reality, literature and life-and in the process raises questions about its own fictionality.