Catherine is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels but also to expose the horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects, Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.