'No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.' Northanger Abbey is a comedy about reading and misreading-of books and the world-and about different kinds of peril, both imagined and real. In it, Austen's youngest heroine, Catherine Morland, must navigate financial disadvantage, social constraint, and sometimes quite ruthless manipulation. The absurdities of fashion and conspicuous consumption, voguish ostentation and social competition are seen first in shark-infested Bath, (the premier health resort and marriage market of the day) and then in a more tranquil pocket of rural Gloucestershire that turns out to be a hotbed of materialism and greed. Jane Austen combines making fun of the excesses of the Gothic novel with larger moral issues: the folly of letting literature get in the way of life, and the inexcusability (especially for women) of not thinking for oneself. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Thomas Keymer is Chancellor Henry N.R. Jackman University Professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he has also served as Director of Book History & Print Culture and Chair of the Department of English. He was previously Elmore Fellow and Tutor in English at St Anne's College, University of Oxford, where he remains a Supernumerary Fellow. His books include Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics (2020), Poetics of the Pillory: English Literature and Seditious Libel 1660-1820 (2019), and, as editor, The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume One: Prose Fiction from the Origins of Print to 1750 (2017).