Catherine Morland is a young girl with a very active imagination. Her naivety and love of sensational novels lead her to approach the fashionable social scene in Bath and her stay at nearby Northanger Abbey with preconceptions that have embarrassing and entertaining consequences. This fully annotated critical edition of Northanger Abbey is based on the text of the novel as published posthumously in 1818. It features an appendix summarising the plots and situations of the Gothic fictions Austen parodied, an extensive critical introduction, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus.