Published in 2019 (first published 1817)
219 pages
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on July 18, 1817.
As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.
What is this book about?
When seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, a country clergyman’s daughter, is invited to spend a season in Bath with the fashionable high society, little does she imagine the delights and perils that await her. Introduced to the joys of Gothic novels by her new friend, Isabella Thorpe, Catherine yearns for romance and mystery. Her expectations soar when she is invited to stay with the beguiling Henry Tilney and his family in Northanger Abbey. Because she has been reading Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho, Catherine expects mystery and intrigue at every turn. However, the truth turns out to be even stranger than fiction.
