The witty and sharply satirical novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817) have an influence that shows no sign of waning, with continual adaptations and echoes in contemporary culture, and an ever-enthusiastic audience.

While enjoying a six weeks' stay in fashionable Bath, the young and callow Catherine Morland is introduced to the delights of high society. Thanks to a new literary diet of the sensational and the macabre, Catherine travels to Northanger Abbey fully expecting to become embroiled in a Gothic adventure of intrigue and suspense - and, once there, soon begins to form the most gruesome and improbable theories about the exploits of its occupants.

An early work, but published posthumously, Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic genre typified by the novels of Ann Radcliffe, as well as a witty comedy of manners in the style of Jane Austen's later novels and, ultimately, an enchanting love story.

As a creative realist, giving to her characters the very body and pressure of actual life, no writer, living or dead, has surpassed her.