NORTHANGER ABBEY and A MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN (Cambridge World Classics) Complete Novel by Jane Austen and Biography by James Edward Austen (Leigh) (Annotated) (Complete Works of Jane Austen)
Book Description
ANNOTATED:
* Contains literary critiques, detailed biographies, and detailed historical context
OVERVIEW:
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication. The novel was written about the years 1798-1799. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year to a London bookseller, Crosby & Co., who decided against ...
MoreANNOTATED:
* Contains literary critiques, detailed biographies, and detailed historical context
OVERVIEW:
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication. The novel was written about the years 1798-1799. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year to a London bookseller, Crosby & Co., who decided against publishing. The novel was further revised before being brought out posthumously in late December 1817 (1818 given on the title-page).
Northanger Abbey follows seventeen-year-old Gothic novel aficionado Catherine Morland and family friends Mr. and Mrs. Allen as they visit Bath, England. Catherine is in Bath for the first time. There she meets her friends such as Isabella Thorpe, and goes to balls. Catherine finds herself pursued by Isabella's brother, the rather rough-mannered, slovenly John Thorpe, and by her real love interest, Henry Tilney. She also becomes friends with Eleanor Tilney, Henry's younger sister. Henry captivates her with his view on novels and his knowledge of history and the world. General Tilney (Henry and Eleanor's father) invites Catherine to visit their estate, Northanger Abbey, which, from her reading of Ann Radcliffe's gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho, she expects to be dark, ancient and full of Gothic horrors and fantastical mystery.
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 undistinguished girl from a middle-class family, allowing the heroine to fall in love with the hero before he has a serious thought of her, and exposing the heroine's romantic fears and curiosities as groundless. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin speculates that Austen may have begun this book, which is more explicitly comic than her other works and contains many literary allusions that her parents and siblings would have enjoyed, as a family entertainment-a piece of lighthearted parody to be read aloud by the fireside.
This Special Critical Edition of NORTHANGER ABBEY (Cambridge World Classics) is the only volume which contains the complete unabridged novel along with A MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN a comprehensive biography of Jane Austen by Jane Austen's nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A Memoir of Jane Austen was the first major biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives.
SPECIAL KINDLE ENABLED FEATURES:
This edition contains special Kindle enabled features, including interactive table of contents, text-to-speech capabilities which enable audiobook features, as well as words that can be looked up on the Kindle supplied built in dictionary.
The volume also employs PerfectLink (TM) technology which allows Amazon Kindle readers to enjoy not only a fully interactive table of contents, but also the ability to click through to each section in the novel.
| Publisher | Cambridge World Classics |
| Binding | Kindle Edition (214 editions) |
| Reading Level | Uncategorized
|
| # of Pages | N/A |
| ISBN-10 | B004KAAVBE |
| Publication Date | 01/21/2011 |
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