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
Northanger Abbey those who read novels. It is also made clear in this text that those who are considered "good" and well-educated read novels, such as Henry and Eleanor Tilney. John Thorpe, for example, who does not read novels, is the cad of the text. Furthermore, there is a distinction made between Catherine's imagination and childishness that encourages her fantasy of a murderous General Tilney, rather than it being a direct fault of the novel genre. "Northanger Abbey" is fundamentally a parody of Gothic fiction. Austen turns the conventions of eighteenth-century novels on their head, by making her heroine a plain and