Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen
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The Borough Press
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London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Introduction © Val McDermid 2014
Jacket layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Design © Gray318
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Source ISBN: 9780007517954
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007517961
Version: 2020-11-18
Contents
An Introduction by Val McDermid
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases Adapted from the Collins English Dictionary
Northanger Abbey is the least conventional of Jane Austen’s six published novels. It’s also the least well known, which always surprises me because in some respects, it’s much closer to modern fiction than it is to the Victorian novels that succeeded it. Like the other five, it has at its heart a love story shaped by the conventions of the time. But unlike them, it goes beyond that to take a shrewd and unsparing look at the role fiction plays in our lives.
This is the novel where Austen tells us what she really thinks about her companions in the literary landscape. She takes sideswipes at those who claim fiction is a waste of time. She lambasts historians