Thus some words are defined differently at different points, while many words are defined only in certain places, since in other places they are used in ways that remain familiar today.

Repetitions: This book has been designed so it can be used as a reference. For this reason many entries refer the reader to other pages where more complete information about a topic exists. This, however, is not practical for definitions of words, so in some cases definitions are repeated at appropriate points.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I must once again thank my editor, Diana Secker Tesdell, who as always has proved invaluable in allowing me to finish this book. Her services included thorough reading and revision of everything I wrote, excellent suggestions regarding new material and ideas, and continual patience and resourcefulness in responding to the various difficulties or questions that arose. I am also grateful to Kathleen Cook and others at Anchor Books who helped shepherd this project toward completion.

Further appreciation is due to the staff of the Bethlehem Public Library, the New York State Library, the New York Public Library, and the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for helping me procure the materials essential for my research.

Finally, I must express my gratitude to the fellow members of the Capital District Jane Austen Society of North America for their support and encouragement in my continual exploration of the world of Jane Austen.

Introduction

Of Jane Austen’s six complete novels, Northanger Abbey was the first to attain its finished form. Appropriately, it is the one that most bears the traces of the author’s early literary experiences and efforts, which emerged out of the circumstances of her childhood. Born on December 16, 1775, in the county of Hampshire in southern England, Jane Austen, like the heroine of Northanger Abbey, was the daughter of a clergyman, George Austen. Her mother, Cassandra Austen Leigh, came from a family consisting mainly of landed gentry, the principal social group depicted in Jane Austen’s novels. The family provided an atmosphere that fostered learning and literature: her father supplemented his income by running a school for boys, several of her brothers tried their hands at literary composition, and Jane received encouragement for her own literary efforts.

These efforts began at thirteen. Initially she produced short, highly comical sketches, often mocking literary works of the day. Some longer pieces from her later adolescence continued in this spirit of satire and parody; others were more serious and reveal the interest in the delineation of character that would mark all her novels. As she matured, she began to draft entire novels. Her first known completed novel was Elinor and Marianne, the initial version of what eventually became Sense and Sensibility; it was probably written in 1795, when she was nineteen. Late in 1796 she began First Impressions, the first version of Pride and Prejudice, which upon completion impressed her family sufficiently that her father sent the manuscript to a publisher. Although First Impressions was rejected, Austen persevered, modifying Elinor and Marianne and composing a third novel, Susan, the original version of Northanger Abbey, which was probably completed in 1799.

This last novel draws heavily on a specific experience in Jane Austen’s life: her time in the popular resort town of Bath. Most of Austen’s childhood had been spent with her parents and her sister, Cassandra, in the town of Steventon, though her existence there was punctuated by periodic travels. Two of those, in 1797 and 1799, were visits of a month or two to Bath. Her familiarity with the city increased further when her father retired from his clerical position and moved there with his wife and daughters in 1801. At some point after her arrival, and with the benefit of greater familiarity with the town, Jane Austen returned to Susan, and in 1803 a revised version was submitted to a publisher, who purchased the rights but never published it. Otherwise all she wrote during her five years in Bath was an unfinished novel called The Watsons. In this period she also rejected, after briefly accepting, her one known offer of marriage.

Eventually, after she and her mother and sister left Bath in 1806, due to the death of Mr. Austen in the preceding year, and then resided in the port city of Southampton, they were able to move in 1809 into a cottage owned by Jane’s brother Edward, in the Hampshire village of Chawton. The quiet of its setting allowed Jane to dedicate herself more fully to writing. She began by revising her first two completed novels from the later 1790s. The result was the publication, in October 1811, of Sense and Sensibility and, in January 1813, of Pride and Prejudice. The first, with an author’s credit that said simply “By a Lady,” enjoyed fairly good sales, and the second experienced even greater success. She followed this with two completely new compositions, Mansfield Park, published in May 1814, and Emma, appearing in December of 1815.

Unfortunately, even as knowledge and appreciation of Austen’s work was growing, her health began to decline during the following year. She still managed to finish the relatively brief Persuasion and to begin another novel, Sanditon. She also had her brother Henry buy back the rights to publish Susan, and she prepared it for possible publication, changing the name of the heroine and book to Catherine, due to the appearance of another novel in the interval named Susan, and affixing a short preface explaining its delay in publication (see this page). However, on July 18, 1817, Austen died.