A new edition of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, originally published posthumously in 1818. Northanger Abbey is the story of seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, one of ten children of a country clergyman, whose wild imagination and excessive fondness for Gothic novels (especially Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho ) has skewed her worldview and interactions with others to great comic effect. Fundamentally a parody of the Gothic fiction that was so popular in Austen's formative years, Northanger Abbey is a uniquely significant work, in that it shows Austen's departure from those conventions and tropes -- featuring three dimensional heroines, who were not perfect people, but flawed, rounded characters who behaved naturally and not just as the novel's plot demanded. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in Hampshire, England, to George Austen, a rector, and his wife, Cassandra. Her novels include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and N orthanger Abbey and Persuasion , published together posthumously in 1818. A short epistolary novella, Lady Susan , and another unfinished work, The Watsons , were publish posthumously in 1871, and a final unfinished novel, Sanditon , was eventually published in 1925. Her works are considered to be among the finest examples of early 19th century British literature, hallmarks of the transitionto 19th century literary realism.