Origins of baseball the hand. Another early print reference is Jane Austen's novel "Northanger Abbey", originally written 1798-1799. In the first chapter the young English heroine Catherine Morland is described as preferring "cricket, base ball, riding on horseback and running about the country to books". About the same time, Austen's cousin Cassandra Cooke mentioned baseball in her novel "Battleridge". In her 1820s "Village Sketch" "Jack Hatch", author Mary Russell Mitford wrote: In 1828, William Clarke of London published the second edition of "The Boy’s Own Book", which included rules for rounders (the oldest known use of that name), and contains the first printed
Northanger Abbey (2007 film) did not state what happened to them in the novel, but Davies believed Frederick would have seduced Isabella. During an interview with Marion McMullen from the "Coventry Evening Telegraph", Davies explained that the Gothic elements to the novel gave him inspiration to add dream sequences and fantasies to the script. He told McMullen, "I've been very faithful to the book, but one of the differences has been writing the scenes showing Catherine's fantasies. Catherine is a great reader of horror fiction – the gothic novel was fairly popular in those days, like a young girl today who would read a