![]() The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs – the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books” (pg. ![]() ![]() Discussing her reading habits, Catherine describes the follies then current in historical writing, saying, “The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The work satirizes gothic novels though the heroine, Catherine Morland, who “is in training for a heroine.” She is fond of gothic novels, particularly the work of Ann Radcliffe’s work, and this allows Austen to comment on the novel as a literary form, defending it against critics who derided it for its supposed lack of serious content. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was the first she completed for publication, in 1803, though it was not published until after her death in 1817. ![]()
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