Penguin Books Ltd

Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her acquaintances: rude, boorish John Thorpe, his flirtatious sister Isabella, who shares Catherine's love of novels and intrigue, and sophisticated Eleanor and Henry Tilney, who invite her to their father's mysterious house, Northanger Abbey.

During an eventful season at Bath, young, naive Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine's love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father's mysterious house.

Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of the author's own insignificance, this book tells the story of his tortured life. It describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'.