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Although not published until after her death, Northanger Abbey was one of Jane Austen's earliest works; and the scheme of it is so unlike her other novels that it may be said to occupy a place by itself. Except for the trifling drama of The Mystery, this work is the only remaining proof of her youthful taste for burlesque, albeit softened and improved by her maturer judgment when she prepared the work for the press in 1803. It is, indeed, so complete and so clever a parody of many of the novels of her day, that it can hardly be appreciated by those who do not recognise the originals of its situations and characters, or understand the kind of sensational writing in which Richardson and Fielding were leaders, followed at a considerable distance by a host of inferior writers. After a prolonged study of these writers, especially of Mrs. Radcliffe, one can only marvel at the ingenuity with which the heroes and heroines are forced into harrowing and extraordinary circumstances, such as even a hundred years ago can hardly have been possible. Mrs. Radcliffe seems to have had some perception of this absurdity, and her stories, therefore, consist of continual shocks to the imagination, which she feels bound to explain away in the
