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Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey

List Price: $6.95
Your Price: $6.26
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Amusing!
Review: I found this novel Jane Austen's most amusing. Catherine Morland is her youngest heroine and her innocence and large imagination land her in situations Lizzy Bennett or Anne Elliott would never tread. It's fun, clever and witty! Very enjoyable!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: typical jane austen
Review: another book of hers i've read, and i swear, i can't tell them apart in my mind. it's almost as if you read one, you've read them all. most of them i don't even finish, though i did finish this one. not quite as good as P & P, but that could just be because that was the first of austen's work i read, and they all seem like P&P. the ending to northanger was awful. all tell and no show. but that seems to be a common problem with her, she summarizes too much and doesn't really tell us a story. still, one of her worthier books.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Typical Jane Austen?
Review: The story describes the development of a young girl, Catherine Morland. She is the daughter of a clergyman, not very rich nor especially handsome or clever. At the age of seventeen she is allowed to go with Mr. and Mrs. Allen to Bath, were all the upper class of England spends the holidays. She meets there a plenty of young people, for example John and Isabella Thorpe, Eleanor Tilney and her brother Henry. They all become friends, but John and Henry take a deeper interest in Catherine. She has to make up her decision: The young student John or the earnest reverend Henry, and soon it's clear. Catherine goes with Eleanor and Henry to stay for a visit at the abbey where they are living with their father, Captain Tilney, while Isabella ingages with Catherines brother James. As Catherine has read many novels about misteries (f.e. "The misteries of Udolpho") she expects to find something puzzling and amazing in this old abbey. Everywhere she looks for a strange thing, but never finds anything. Even Henry tells her once how stupid she is to believe in such things, and now Catherine has a more realistic vue to the world around her. But then she receives a letter from her brother James where he writes that Isabella has left him, and moreover Catherine has to leave the abbey because Captain Tilney has found out that she isn't as rich as he thought and because of that not adapted to become Henry's wife. Through all these experiences Catherine grows up, and at the end of the story she is a very different woman than at the beginning.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Charming Demeanor, Wickedly Funny
Review: " "I see what you think of me," said he gravely--"I shall make but a poor figure in your journal tomorrow."

"My journal!"

"Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings--plain black shoes--appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense."

"Indeed I shall say no such thing."

"Shall I tell you what you ought to say?"

"If you please."

"I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King; had a great deal of conversation with him--seems a most extraordinary genius--hope I may know more of him. That, madam, is what I wish you to say." "

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Northanger Abbey," the first, shortest, most satiric, and least read of Jane Austen's completed novels, is a delightful treasure that will make you quite literally laugh out loud (so beware bringing the book to the airport, as I did, lest you suffer strange glances for your smothered sniggers). Following the journey of the coming-of-age Catherine Morland and her misadventures in Bath to the "horrid" Abbey, Jane Austen presents us with perhaps her funniest sociological book, that proves not only that teens will be teens in any age, but that an overactive imagination is not always a blessing, and that love is often the result of being loved. Readers should keep on the lookout for the commentaries on novels, feminine wiles and homecomings from Austen herself - a technique subdued in her other novels. The cast also includes Jane Austen's wittiest hero, Henry Tilney (a.k.a. "Da Man"), as well as a female foil more duplicitous than "Sense and Sensibility's" Lucy Steele. The Signet Classic edition boasts a good introduction by Margaret Drabble, perhaps better read after the text as a commentary. Best viewed as a comedic parody, "Northanger Abbey" is a pleasure to read, whether you are a long-standing member of the JASNA, or just dipping into the boisterous literature of the Regency.

Felicitous reading! Yours, &c.,

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Classic love and tragedy with a gothic twist
Review: Not only does Austen create a gothic environment to haunt the readers and the characters, but she places the character ahead of the overall story. Not the story is bad, but readers tend to read Austen's work for her characters and their heartbreaking fates. This is truely a masterpiece featuring classic decision making from the main protagonist and an incredible and tragic solution that calms the storm of the story.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Charming story, had it not been written by Austen...
Review: Austen's supposed satire of the gothic novel is tangled up with what would have been the finest fluff of effeminate fiction -- had anyone else written it. Austen, however, cannot resist sinking her sharp little claws into naivete, romance, and (of course, this IS Jane Austen) men. I will say, it is the only book of hers that I have ever been able to finish.

No one would want to be quite as stupid as poor Catherine, but we've all been naive. Personally, I envy Catherine the ability to be so pure and trusting with the object of her affection -- as jaded and overeducated a modern woman as I am, I find myself reading the story with no feeling so strong as a wish that (after closely and cynically examining him) I could meet a man with whom I felt free to admire his perfections and flaws as the finest in the world! (I'm sure there's one out there.) I'm sure Miss Austen would find this proof that I am as contemptibly stupid as Catherine, but when we kill our inner innocent completely, then we have made life unworth living, and I pity all the people with whom we live and work.

The book would be much better if it didn't dawdle with condemning feminine sweetness & innocence & male behavior's apparently universal (to Austen) unacceptability, particularly in tarring them all with the same brush. It would be far better if bereft of the perfunctorily "happy ending" which is treated in such a way that love and marriage wind up reeking of as much of Austen's contempt to at least the same degree as Mrs. Radcliffe's literary crimes.

If you want to see this story the way it should be, the way it's funny, check out the movie (an episode of Masterpiece Theater). If you want to slurp latte in a windowless cafe and paint your nails black, buy the whole Jane Austen collection!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An uncomplicated book for its time
Review: The book does a good job of keeping the storyline simple and uncomplicated .. not too many characters. However, the fact that it is the first book Jane Austen wrote comes across easily.. it cannot compare with other books of hers. It has a particularly abrupt ending which was rather disappointing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good!
Review: Northanger abbey is a charming book. Jane Austen draw a picture for the reader of the world as the way he are. This book is very good and i have nothing else to say but this.

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: About the Book
Review: The earliest of her six major novels, NORTHANGER ABBEY remained unpublished until after Jane Austen's death. A deliciously witty satire of popular Gothic romances, it is perhaps Austen's lightest, most delightful excursion into a young woman's world. Catherine Morland, an unlikely heroine--unlikely because she is so ordinary--forsakes her English village for the pleasures and perils of Bath. There, among a circle of Austen's wonderfully vain, disembeling,and fashionable characters, she meets a potential suitor, Henry Tilney. But with her imagination fueled by melodramatic novels, Catherine turns a visit to his home, Northanger Abbey, into a hunt for dark family secrets. The result is a series of hilarious social gaffes and harsh awakenings that for all of Austen's youthful exuberance nevertheless conveys her mature vision of literature and life--and the consequences of mistaking one for the other.

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: About the Author
Review: Though the domain of Jane Austen's novels was as circumscribed as her life, her caustic wit and keen observation made her the equal of the greatest novelists in any language. Born the seventh child of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16,1775, she was educated mainly at home. At an early age she began writing sketches and satires of popular novels for her family's entertainment. As a clergyman's daughter from a well-connected family, she had ample opportunity to study the habits of the middle class, the gentry, and the aristocracy. At twenty-one she began a novel called "First Impressions," an early version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. In 1801, on her father's retirement, the family moved to the fashionable resort of Bath. Two years later she sold a first version of NORTHANGER ABBEY to a London publisher, but the first of her novels to appear was SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, published at her own expense in 1811. It was followed by PRIDE AND PREJUDICE(1813), MANSFIELD PARK(1814), and EMMA (1816).


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