Customer Reviews

SPARKLING READING OF LESSER KNOWN AUSTEN - By: N. Stinchcombe, 14 Aug 2007
Northanger Abbey is none of Austen's earlier works but has all the qualities that she would later bring to better-known novels like Emma - wit, wry humour & an unerring eye for human folly. This is a comic send-up of the trappings of Gothic romance as our young ingenuous heroine Catherine Morland, addicted to the Gothic novels of Mrs Radcliffe, learns that the threat to her romance with handsome good-hearted Henry Tilney is comes from malice more mundane than ghouls & ghosts. This is an unabridged reading & is splendidly done by Juliet Stevenson - every character being given a readily-identifiable & strongly delineated vocal presence.