Northanger Abbey

Catherine Morland has grown up in a comfortable country family, with none of the misfortunes that usually prepare a girl to become the heroine of a novel. At seventeen she is invited to Bath, where she hopes to dance, make friends and enjoy herself. She brings an eager affection for Gothic fiction and very little experience of people who say one thing while wanting another.

Bath offers plenty to practise on. Her chaperone, Mrs Allen, can be relied upon to notice a dress; Isabella Thorpe promises devoted friendship with remarkable speed. Henry Tilney is harder to place. He teases Catherine about the conversations young people are expected to have, then astonishes Mrs Allen by knowing something about muslin. Austen lets the awkwardness and excitement of making an acquaintance unfold at conversational speed, with Catherine trying to work out when she is meant to laugh.

An invitation to Northanger Abbey gives her reading imagination a more suggestive setting. But Austen is just as interested in what Catherine expects from a friend, a dance or a polite assurance. Her narrator joins in freely, defending novels and poking fun at the conventions Catherine has taken to heart. You need no reading list of Gothic romances to enjoy the company: the book supplies its own affectionate jokes about readers hoping that something extraordinary will happen. Beneath that playfulness is the recognisable difficulty of entering society with goodwill and discovering how much judgement an ordinary invitation can require.