Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen · 1775–1817 · England

Why it matters

Catherine Morland, a besotted reader of gothic novels, imagines murder in a country house and gets a much smaller, funnier lesson in the gap between fiction and life instead. Austen's earliest-written novel is also her most playful: a coming-of-age story that doubles as a satire of the gothic craze itself.

At a glance

Her shortest and most straightforwardly comic novel, aimed partly at teenage readers of gothic fiction.