Northanger Abbey for it. There is evidence that Austen further revised the novel in 1816-1817 with the intention of having it published. Austen rewrote sections, renaming the main character Catherine and using that as her working title. After her death, Austen's brother Henry gave the novel its final name and arranged for publication of "Northanger Abbey" in late December 1817 (1818 given on the title page), as the first two volumes of a four-volume set, with a preface for the first time publicly identifying Jane Austen as the author of all her novels. Neither "Northanger Abbey" nor "Persuasion" was published under the
Persuasion (novel) the power of books over women; namely were women more susceptible to the power of reading than men, and if so, was reading a benign or malign influence on women? Austen had first taken up this question in "Northanger Abbey" where reading Gothic books has comic effects on Catherine Morland, but also gives a more acute sense of reality and to understand people. Pinch wrote that Austen returned to this theme of the power of books on women in "Persuasion", but in a more mature and probing manner, where as the novel is concerned with "... what it feels like