Northanger Abbey Northanger Abbey Northanger Abbey () was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, in 1803. However, it was not published until after her death in 1817, along with another novel of hers, "Persuasion." "Northanger Abbey" is a satire of Gothic novels, which were quite popular at the time, in 1798–99. This coming-of-age story revolves around Catherine Morland, a young and naïve "heroine," who entertains the reader on her journey to a better understanding of the world and those around her. In the course of the novel, she discovers that she differs from those other women who
Northanger Abbey "The Monk". Isabella Thorpe gives Catherine a list of seven books that are commonly referred to as the "Northanger 'horrid' novels"; these works were later thought to be of Austen's own invention until the British writers Montague Summers and Michael Sadleir re-discovered in the 1920s that they actually did exist. The list is as follows: All seven of these were republished by the Folio Society in London in the 1960s, and since 2005 Valancourt Books has released new editions of the 'horrids', the seventh and final being released in 2015. The most significant allusion, however, is to Ann Radcliffe's "The