Northanger Abbey / Edition 1

Northanger Abbey / Edition 1

ISBN-10:
0321202082
ISBN-13:
9780321202086
Pub. Date:
09/02/2004
Publisher:
Pearson Education
ISBN-10:
0321202082
ISBN-13:
9780321202086
Pub. Date:
09/02/2004
Publisher:
Pearson Education
Northanger Abbey / Edition 1

Northanger Abbey / Edition 1

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Overview

From Longman's Cultural Editions Series, Northanger Abbey, edited by Marilyn Gaull, presents key texts that illuminate the lively intersections of literature, tradition, and culture.

This edition places Jane Austen and Northanger Abbey in the major conversations of Romanticism, not just the gothic novel and female education. It places the novel in two contexts, 1798, when it was written, and 1818, when it was published, illustrating its relevance to both periods and the major writers, especially the poets.

This edition connects Jane Austen with the major Western literary tradition, from ancient myth, the Arabian Nights, to Cervantes, Flaubert, and Virginia Woolf.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780321202086
Publisher: Pearson Education
Publication date: 09/02/2004
Series: Longman Cultural Editions Series
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Jane Austen is one of the most well-known and widely read English novelists of all time. She was born on December 16, 1775, at the rectory in the village of Steventon, in Hampshire, England. Austen’s fascination with words and with the world of stories began early on in her life. In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started writing her own novels, the first one being Love and Freindship [sic]— a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters.
Between 1811 and 1816, Austen started to anonymously publish her works. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma were all published during this time. She started working on Persuasion, her last completed novel, soon after she finished Emma. Northanger Abbey was one of the first novels that Austen completed, but it was published posthumously in 1817. In 1816, at the age of forty-one, Austen became ill with Addison’s disease. She died on July 18, 1817.

Date of Birth:

December 16, 1775

Date of Death:

July 18, 1817

Place of Birth:

Village of Steventon in Hampshire, England

Place of Death:

Winchester, Hampshire, England

Education:

Taught at home by her father

Read an Excerpt

Chapter I

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard—and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence, besides two good livings—and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as any body might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more—to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features;—so much for her person;—and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys’ plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure ofmischief—at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take.—Such were her propensities—her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand any thing before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat the “Beggar’s Petition;” and after all, her next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that Catherine was always stupid,—by no means; she learnt the fable of “The Hare and many Friends,” as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn music; and Catherine was sure she should like it, for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinnet; so, at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear it;—and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Catherine’s life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother, or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one another.—Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable character!—for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper; was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.

Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen, appearances were mending; she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement. “Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl,—she is almost pretty to day,” were words which caught her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children every thing they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books—or at least books of information—for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

From Pope, she learnt to censure those who

“bear about the mockery of woe.”

From Gray, that

“Many a flower is born to blush unseen, “And waste its fragrance on the desert air.”

From Thompson, that

——“It is a delightful task “To teach the young idea how to shoot.”

And from Shakspeare she gained a great store of information—amongst the rest, that

———“Trifles light as air, “Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong, “As proofs of Holy Writ.”

That “The poor beetle, which we tread upon, “In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great “As when a giant dies.”

And that a young woman in love always looks ——“like Patience on a monument “Smiling at Grief.”

So far her improvement was sufficient—and in many other points she came on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people’s performance with very little fatigue. Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil—she had no notion of drawing—not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover’s profile, that she might be detected in the design. There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height. At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to pourtray. She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility; without having excited one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no—not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door—not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Mr. Allen, who owned the chief of the property about Fuller- ton, the village in Wiltshire where the Morlands lived, was ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution;—and his lady, a good- humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad, invited her to go with them. Mr. and Mrs. Morland were all compliance, and Catherine all happiness.


From the Paperback edition.

Copyright 2002 by Jane Austen Introduction by Robert Kiely

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations.

About Longman Cultural Editions.

About this Edition.

Jane Austen’s Life and Times.

Introduction.

Table of Dates.

Northanger Abbey.

Contexts.

The Romance Plot.

Cupid and Psyche.

Gothic Romance.

Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto.

William Beckford Vathek.

Matthew Gregory Lewis The Monk.

Ann Radcliffe.

Supernaturalism (Biographia Literaria).

Sensibility.

Sublime (Curiosity).

The Mysteries of Udolpho.

The Italian—Schedoni.

Gothic Decline.

Gothic Parody.

Beckford, Azemia.

Eaton Stannard Barrett The Heroine.

T.L. Peacock Nightmare Abbey.

Bath, England.

“Faery lands forlorn.”

Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.

From Gothic Romance to Historical Novel.

Sir Walter Scott Waverley.

The Picturesque, Enclosures, and Anti-Picturesque.

The Picturesque.

William Gilpin Observations on the River Wye.

James Plumptre The Lakers.

Enclosures and the Anti-Picturesque.

George Crabbe The Village.

Reviews of Northanger Abbey.

British Critic.

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.

Bibliography.

Suggestions for Further Reading.

What People are Saying About This

Thomas

"She is a prose Shakesphere."

Thomas Macaulay

She is a prose Shakespeare.

From the Publisher

“Jane Austen is the Rosetta stone of literature.” —Anna Quindlen

Reading Group Guide

1. Robert Kilely, in his Introduction, says that although Northanger Abbey satirizes gothic novels, what's more significant about it is the manner in which Jane Austen bases her narrative on conversation. How is conversation used in the novel as a narrative device? How does conversation both aid and hinder the characters?

2. Jane Austen deftly shifts voices so as to allow us to see the world through Catherine's eyes and her own eyes (often through Henry Tilney). What effects does this have on the reader?

3. What gothic elements are incorporated into the novel? What are the anti-gothic elements and figures of the novel? How does Austen juxtapose Bath and the Abbey?

4. It can be argued that Henry Tilney is a foil to John Thorpe. What other characters serve as foils to each other? Does Catherine have a foil?

5. Consider the use of sarcasm in the novel. How does Henry Tilney's sarcasm force Catherine to think things through more thoroughly and expand her values and notions?

6. The novel depicts a disparity of class and wealth, most notably between the Thorpes and the Tilneys. What importance does social convention hold? Is there a certain relevance between class and behavior appertaining to the Thorpes and Tilneys? Is it ever justifiable to break with social convention and propriety?

7. One of the major elements in Northanger Abbey is reading, particularly reading novels. What are some of the differences between novels and reality that Austen is discerning? Is she convinced that novels are worthless? What is surprising about the way novels were perceived in the early nineteenth century?

8. 'No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland inher infancy, would have supposed her to be a heroine, ' Jane Austen writes in her opening paragraph. Do you agree that Catherine is a heroine? How does she develop through the novel and what does she learn about her self and the world around her?

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