Jane Austen French aristocrat whose first husband the Comte de Feuillide had been guillotined, causing her to flee to Britain, where she married Henry Austen. The description of the execution of the Comte de Feuillide related by his widow left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life. During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of "Elinor and Marianne", Austen began writing a third novel with the working title "Susan" – later "Northanger Abbey" – a satire on the popular Gothic novel. Austen completed her work about a year later. In early
Styles and themes of Jane Austen scholar has suggested that in this Austen is signalling "a general attack on the dangers of 'fiction'". Austen's novels can easily be situated within the 18th-century novel tradition. Austen, like the rest of her family, was a great novel reader. Her letters contain many allusions to contemporary fiction, often to such small details as to show that she was thoroughly familiar with what she read. Austen read and reread novels, even minor ones. She read widely within the genre, including many works considered mediocre both then and now, but tended to emphasize domestic fiction by women writers, and her own