Following this event, Henry arranged for Persuasion and Northanger Abbey—the third and final title of what had been Susan, probably chosen by the publisher—to come out together, along with a brief biographical notice (written by him) that finally revealed her identity to the world.

Northanger Abbey, more than any Austen novel, is the product of the author’s reactions to other works of fiction. Novels had first arisen as a distinct and influential literary genre in the eighteenth century. Extended fictional narratives in prose had existed before, but they were relatively few in number, and they commanded far less interest and respect than long-established genres such as lyric and narrative poetry and drama. What helped change this was a tremendous increase in the number of books published during the eighteenth century in Britain—a process abetted by the nation’s marked growth over the course of the century in population, in rates of literacy, and in standards of living, which gave more people the means to buy books and the leisure to consume them. The spread of circulating libraries in the second half of the century further assisted this process, by allowing large numbers of people, for a modest fee, to borrow rather than buy books. These changes stimulated the market for all types of books, but novels were a particular beneficiary, and by the latter part of the century they were the most common type of leisure reading, with scores of new novels pouring forth from the presses to feed a seemingly insatiable demand.

These new novels departed from earlier prose fiction in substantive ways. Earlier works had tended to be extravagant or fabulous adventures set in remote times and places, involving larger-than-life characters; their narratives were also highly episodic and discursive. In contrast, novels were usually set in the present, and involved characters and incidents one might encounter in ordinary life. In addition, novelists gradually moved toward stories with a single overarching plot, applying to their works the same principle of unity of action that had long held sway in the drama. Discussion of the novel as a literary genre also increased, with commentators debating such questions as the relative merits of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, the two most celebrated novelists of the century. At the same time, many people still held the novel in low esteem, an attitude fortified in the last three decades of the century by the absence of any novelists meeting the standards set by Fielding and Richardson, despite their continually expanding numbers.

Jane Austen’s literary education occurred within this context. She, like other members of her family, was an avid reader of novels, and the various letters to her sister in which she praises or criticizes novels suggest that they formed an active topic of discussion within the family. Austen’s interest is further indicated by her youthful writings. Many are partly or wholly parodies of current fiction styles, particularly the popular sentimental novels of the day, which specialized in arousing the feelings of the reader by placing a highly sensitive principal character, often a young woman, in situations of acute distress. Among the absurdities Austen targets in her youthful works are overly perfect protagonists, heroines constantly overcome by their emotions, improbable coincidences and plot devices, and the insertion of asides or background stories having no relationship to the main action. At the same time, she attempted many novels (in embryonic form) of her own, tales in which she sets up the basis for an extended narrative, presents a variety of characters, and explores important moral or psychological issues.

These two approaches or purposes shape Northanger Abbey: it is both a parody of novels and a sustained novel in its own right. The author devotes a sizable portion of the book to mocking many features of contemporary novels, most notably those of the sentimental novel and its offshoot, the Gothic horror tale. But while doing so she replicates the basic story framework of a large swath of these novels, that of an innocent young woman going out into the world and undergoing a series of trials and difficulties. For, in contrast to many commentators of the time, Jane Austen’s antipathy toward the defects and absurdities of the contemporary novel did not lead her to dismiss the genre altogether. Instead, she was determined to demonstrate the great potential of the form, when purged of these defects and guided by a more reasonable set of literary values. This is manifested in Northanger Abbey most sharply when, immediately before the crucial conversation in which the heroine’s foolish friend stokes her infatuation with Gothic horror novels—an infatuation that will later have such a baleful effect—the narrator, in the most sustained authorial intervention in Austen’s oeuvre, defends in principle such discussions of fiction and delivers an eloquent defense of the novel as an art form, complete with fulsome praise of recent efforts by the two leading practitioners of the day, Frances (or Fanny) Burney and Maria Edgeworth. It is as if Austen wishes to ensure that the reader is not misled by the parody to condemn the whole rather than certain egregious parts.

Northanger Abbey’s parody falls into two phases.1 In the first, spanning the first half of the novel, Austen tells the story of the heroine to the frequent accompaniment of brief witty asides contrasting her character, behavior, or experiences with the far more extravagant versions found in other novels, particularly sentimental ones. This method allows the author, in presenting such essential elements of a novel as the heroine’s background and personality, her journey to a new place, her encounter with new acquaintances, and her first feelings of romantic attraction, both to furnish a genuine story that draws the reader into the fate of the heroine and to satirize, through the persistent ordinariness of each of those elements, the extraordinary and often unbelievable heroines and adventures found elsewhere. However, as the first half of the novel proceeds, and as more consequential developments occur, such as Catherine’s growing intimacy with the Tilneys, the Thorpes’ efforts to tempt her into rude behavior, and Isabella’s engagement with James, the parodic element diminishes until, by the end of the first half, it has virtually disappeared.

In the second half, set at Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen turns to a different form of parody. Now the heroine’s inner convictions and emotions become the prime target of mockery, as she comes to believe in the reality of the far-fetched events of Gothic horror fiction, especially those created by the genre’s most popular practitioner, Ann Radcliffe. This form of parody has precedents, most famously Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The most notable in the eighteenth century was The Female Quixote (1752), by Charlotte Lennox. Its heroine, under the spell of a group of fantastical romances of the seventeenth century, falls into a series of ridiculous mishaps through her persistent conviction that the sorts of escapades related there, particularly the constant attempts on young women by violent ravishers, are actually happening to her. Jane Austen indicates her familiarity with Lennox’s novel in a letter, in which she says “the ‘Female Quixotte’ . . . makes our evening amusement; to me a very high one, as I find the work quite equal to what I remembered it” (Jan. 17, 1807).