Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was not published until 1818, five months after her death, yet it was believed to have been written in the 1790s, at the time when the gothic novels it so famously criticises were being produced. It was sent to the publishers Crosby and Company under the title Susan in 1803 but was never published. Another novel by the same name was later published anonymously. Based in the remote isles of Scotland, it drew criticism from Anna Laetitia Barbauld, suggesting it was overrun with fevers, faintings, two duels, and deaths. Austen would therefore change the name of the book to distance herself from such criticism, but first, she had to reclaim the rights from the publisher. In 1809, she wrote to them under the pseudonym Mrs. Ashton Dennis (MAD), requesting they either publish the book or she would. They replied, stating they owned the copyright and she could buy it back at the same price they paid.

Opening lines in Jane Austen are always important; everyone remembers Pride and Prejudice. Austen sets the tone by stating, “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.” Heroines of gothic novels were victims, locked away in dark, remote castles and abbeys overseen by overpowering villains who sought to deprive them of their property, chastity, or both. Catherine is more in keeping with the protagonists of the sentimental or domestic novel, concerning a girl’s entrance into society.

Northanger Abbey is the only novel which discusses novel reading in any depth, she refers to reading in other novels but does not discuss the content or authors. Austen begins at the end of Chapter 5 with a defence of novels as a genre. Critics, especially of gothic novels, had criticised them as corrupting influences, especially on young ladies. Austen refers to the “ungenerous and impolite custom” of fellow authors who criticise each other's work, and “if the heroine of one novel is not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?” Yet she immediately goes on to say she will leave it to the reviewers to “talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.” Threadbare suggests their criticism is superficial, but also there is a suggestion from the word trash that not all novels are worth reading, fed by the vast numbers published by the Minerva Press. This view contradicts her earlier assertion that novelists should support each other. She also complains critics base their views on “pride, ignorance, or fashion” and “undervaluing the labour of the novelist and slighting the performances that have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.”

Austen’s ambivalent attitude probably stems from the fact that many of the new authors of the 1790s were women, and if fellow authors and readers did not defend them from the critics, who would? She praises Cecilia and Camilla by Francis Burney and Belinda by Maria Edgeworth, two extremely popular female authors of the time. In terms of gothic novels, Catherine and Isabella’s reading includes Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, both of which were well received by the critics at the time for the use of the explained supernatural.

In contrast, Isabella Thorpe lists a number of books they can read after The Italian that are ‘in the same vein’. They are all gothic novels, but some authors such as Eliza Parsons and Eleanor Sleath were known to be imitators of Radcliffe. The books were Castle of Wolfenbach (Parsons), Clermont (Roche), Mysterious Warnings (Parsons), Necromancer of the Black Forrest (Flammenberg), Midnight Bell (Lathom), Orphan of the Rhine (Sleath), and Horrid Mysteries (Grosse). When Catherine questions the label horrid, Isabella assures her that she has been told by Miss Andrews, who is an angel, that they are. By putting the words angel and horrid in the same sentence, it suggests gothic novels lived up to their reputation of being a corrupting influence on young ladies.

When it comes to Henry Tilney’s reading, Catherine assumes he does not read novels as “gentlemen read better books.” His reply is, “[A] gentleman or lady who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure.” There is even an anecdote where he takes his sister’s copy of the book after reading it aloud to her, and she had to wait while he finished it before she could continue. Catherine expresses her surprise that young men read novels, suggesting they read more serious works, to which Henry replies, “They read nearly as many as women.” It is interesting to note though that John Thorpe only admits to reading Tom Jones (Fielding) and The Monk (Lewis), both novels by men, and in the case of Lewis, caused a scandal by being deemed lewd and blasphemous.

As many twentieth-century critics have pointed out, we have little evidence about what ordinary readers thought about eighteenth-century novels, and this makes Northanger Abbey even more interesting. Austen’s choice of praiseworthy novels is also interesting, as they are all women who follow the Augustine tradition of restraint. Catherine’s comment about history made up of male exploits also suggests a bias towards redressing the balance. Why she singles out Clermont by Regina Maria Roche, an author equally as popular as Radcliffe and Burney, is a mystery, which may only be solved in the pages of the book.