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Northanger Abbey is both an ingenious Gothic parody and a realistic portrait of the social education of a naive young girl in late eighteenth-century England. Conceived in the 1790s but not published until after Jane Austen's death, the novel straddles the style of her childhood writings, with their playful mockery of contemporary fiction, and the later mature works which probe both society and individual psychology. It paints a wonderfully dense picture of the material and social conditions of genteel English life in town and country. Through the young, naïve heroine, the reader experiences the popular delight in escapist and sensational fiction typical of the period. The novel invites us to enjoy being laughed at for our own fictional expectations, while happily fulfilling most of them. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied by Janet Todd illuminate cultural, historical and literary context, bringing Jane Austen's world to life.
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