1817 · published posthumously
Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey (published posthumously in 1817) is Austen's affectionate parody of Gothic fiction. Naive Catherine Morland's imagination, fed on novels, runs wild during her visit to the Tilneys' abbey before reality gently corrects her.
Northanger Abbey has the strangest publication history of any Austen novel: written first among the six (1798–99), sold to a publisher in 1803 for £10, left unprinted in a drawer for thirteen years, bought back by its exasperated author, and finally published five months after her death. The freshest, funniest, most youthful of her books reached readers last — as a posthumous work.
The £10 hostage
Austen completed the novel — then called Susan — around 1799, and in 1803 the London firm Crosby & Co. bought it for £10 and even advertised it as forthcoming. Then nothing. In 1809 Austen wrote them a tart pseudonymous letter (signed “Mrs. Ashton Dennis,” so she could sign off “M.A.D.”) demanding publication or the return of the manuscript; Crosby offered it back for the £10 paid. Only in 1816, with four successful novels behind her, did her brother Henry buy it back — reportedly enjoying the moment of telling Crosby what they had been sitting on.
A parody with a warm heart
The joke is announced in the first sentence: “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.” Catherine is an anti-heroine of the Gothic age — a plain, cheerful, cricket-playing girl whose head has been filled with Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho — and the novel runs her expectations into ordinary reality at every turn. The laundry list found in the mysterious cabinet is the genre’s most famous deflation.
But Austen’s parody is affectionate, and double-edged. Chapter 5 contains her celebrated “defence of the novel” — a sudden, first-person blaze against the fashionable habit of disparaging fiction: novels are works “in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.” She mocks Gothic excess while defending, fiercely, the form itself.
The real Gothic
The twist of the final volume is that Catherine’s instincts weren’t entirely wrong — just misfiled. General Tilney has committed no murder, but his mercenary rage on discovering Catherine isn’t rich, and his expulsion of a nineteen-year-old guest to make a seventy-mile journey alone, is genuine domestic cruelty. The Gothic, Austen suggests, doesn’t live in abbeys; it lives in ordinary selfishness with money at stake.
Its standing
Long treated as the lightest of the six, Northanger Abbey has climbed in critical esteem as its self-awareness came to look ahead of its time — a novel about novel-reading, written by the form’s sharpest young critic. It remains the best entry point to Austen for readers who like their comedy fast.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Northanger Abbey published?
Northanger Abbey was published in December 1817 (title page 1818), five months after Austen's death, bound together with Persuasion and prefaced by her brother Henry's Biographical Notice — the first public naming of Jane Austen as the novels' author.
Why did Northanger Abbey take twenty years to be published?
Austen sold the manuscript (then titled "Susan") to publisher Crosby & Co. for £10 in 1803 — and they simply never printed it. She bought it back in 1816, only after which Crosby learned they had sat on a novel by the author of Pride and Prejudice.
Do I need to know Gothic novels to enjoy Northanger Abbey?
No — Catherine's inflated expectations are funny on their own — but knowing that The Mysteries of Udolpho was the era's blockbuster sharpens every joke. Austen's "defence of the novel" in Chapter 5 is also one of her most quoted passages.