Northanger Abbey novels at the time. According to Austen biographer Claire Tomalin "there is very little trace of personal allusion in the book, although it is written more in the style of a family entertainment than any of the others". Joan Aiken writes: "We can guess that "Susan" [the original title of "Northanger Abbey"], in its first outline, was written very much for family entertainment, addressed to a family audience, like all Jane Austen's juvenile works, with their asides to the reader, and absurd dedications; some of the juvenilia, we know, were specifically addressed to her brothers Charles and Frank; all were
Belinda (Edgeworth novel) to this society novel's spirited heroine. Certainly when Austen was updating her early novel-draft 'Susan', which eventually appeared in print renamed as "Northanger Abbey", she added a reference to "Belinda":" 'Oh, it is only a novel...It is only "Cecilia" or "Camilla", or "Belinda" '; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed". "Belinda" was itself in the tradition of society novels by writers such as Frances Sheridan and Frances Burney, who also charted the travails of bright young women in search of a good marriage. Perhaps Edgeworth's best courtship novel, "Belinda" replaces