



Northanger Abbey


by Jane Austen

(1803)




Contents


 ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHORESS, TO NORTHANGER ABBEY

 CHAPTER 1
 CHAPTER 2
 CHAPTER 3
 CHAPTER 4
 CHAPTER 5
 CHAPTER 6
 CHAPTER 7
 CHAPTER 8
 CHAPTER 9
 CHAPTER 10
 CHAPTER 11
 CHAPTER 12
 CHAPTER 13
 CHAPTER 14
 CHAPTER 15
 CHAPTER 16
 CHAPTER 17
 CHAPTER 18
 CHAPTER 19
 CHAPTER 20
 CHAPTER 21
 CHAPTER 22
 CHAPTER 23
 CHAPTER 24
 CHAPTER 25
 CHAPTER 26
 CHAPTER 27
 CHAPTER 28
 CHAPTER 29
 CHAPTER 30
 CHAPTER 31

 A NOTE ON THE TEXT




ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHORESS, TO NORTHANGER ABBEY


This little work was finished in the year 1803, and intended for
immediate publication. It was disposed of to a bookseller, it was even
advertised, and why the business proceeded no farther, the author has
never been able to learn. That any bookseller should think it
worth-while to purchase what he did not think it worth-while to publish
seems extraordinary. But with this, neither the author nor the public
have any other concern than as some observation is necessary upon those
parts of the work which thirteen years have made comparatively
obsolete. The public are entreated to bear in mind that thirteen years
have passed since it was finished, many more since it was begun, and
that during that period, places, manners, books, and opinions have
undergone considerable changes. CHAPTER 1


No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have
supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the
character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition,
were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being
neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was
Richard—and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable
independence besides two good livings—and he was not in the least
addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful
plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a
good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and
instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody
might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more—to see
them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A
family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there
are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had
little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain,
and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a
thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and
strong features—so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for
heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys’ plays, and greatly
preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic
enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or
watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she
gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at
least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she
was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities—her abilities were
quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything
before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often
inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in
teaching her only to repeat the “Beggar’s Petition”; and after all, her
next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that
Catherine was always stupid—by no means; she learnt the fable of “The
Hare and Many Friends” as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother
wished her to learn music; and Catherine was sure she should like it,
for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinnet;
so, at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear
it; and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being
accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave
off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest
of Catherine’s life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though
whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother or
seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that
way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like
one another. Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French
by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she
shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange,
unaccountable character!—for with all these symptoms of profligacy at
ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom
stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones,
with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild,
hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the
world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house. Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen, appearances were
mending; she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion
improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes
gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of
dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she
grew smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father
and mother remark on her personal improvement. “Catherine grows quite a
good-looking girl—she is almost pretty to-day,” were words which caught
her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! to look
_almost_ pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has
been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty
from her cradle can ever receive. Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children
everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in
lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were
inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful
that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should
prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the
country at the age of fourteen, to books—or at least books of
information—for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be
gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she
had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen
she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines
must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so
serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful
lives.