The Midnight Bell only to see her kidnapped by bandits. The latter third is set in the quintessentially gothic Cohenburg castle and features tales of ghostly apparitions who turn out to be diabolical Roman Catholic priests, another common gothic trope. The Midnight Bell of the title calls the villainous monks to their dark meeting place. The Midnight Bell The Midnight Bell is a gothic novel by Francis Lathom. It was one of the seven "horrid novels" lampooned by Jane Austen in her novel "Northanger Abbey". Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read
Cecilia (Burney novel) in her novel, "Northanger Abbey": “'And what are you reading, Miss — ?' 'Oh! It is only a novel!' replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. 'It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda'; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language." The title of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" may have been