Young and attractive Catherine Moreland has an active imagination. A voracious reader of gothic novels, she believes that their horror can unfold in real life. She but truly begins to understand life and the way of the world when she visits Bath for winter festivities and then Northanger Abbey, the eerie home of Tilneys. Northanger Abbey is youthfully romantic and funny. Written in 1803, it was Jane Austen s first novel. Nonetheless, it is as good as any of her later novels. It got published with Persuasion in one volume after her death in 1817. It goes without saying that it has been adapted for cinema and television on many occasions.