Northanger Abbey [Worth Press]

I'd have to guess that Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's less known books, but it quickly became one of my favorites. The book has a nice, light comic sensibility, never taking itself or its subject matter too seriously. Austen takes a familiar plot--a naive young lady from an unsophisticated background arrives in a bustling, fashionable city (in this case, Bath) and has to learn to keep her wits about her as the tries to find true love--and turns it into a wry commentary on all sorts of subjects.

In my favorite part of the book, the heroine sets off for the eponymous Northanger Abbey and imagines it to be a lonely, windswept castle straight out of a gothic romance novel of the type that were so popular during the time period. And even when she realizes the building is actually relatively modern and comfortable, she still expects all of the trappings of the genre (secret passages, dark secrets, lost manuscripts, imprisoned "dead" family members) at every turn. Anyone who's read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, or The Fall of the House of Usher will recognize the humor. A fun, very readable book.

For essays, we have John Wiltshire starting things off with "Modern Interpretations", which focusses on the relationship between Northanger Abbey and gothic literature. Maggie Lane writes about the fashion and methods of transportation that appear in the book--quite detailed and quite technical, and proof positive that the fascination some men have with bragging about every facet of their automobiles was matched hundreds of years earlier by men on the subject of carriages. Caroline Sanderson writes about the geographical settings in the novel, and helps to explain some of the references in the book that may otherwise be mysterious (like the Bath-specific Pump-room and Lower Rooms). Finally, Josephine Ross writes an essay on the various literary influences on the book.

Next Time: Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist