The Annotated Northanger Abbey

Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and every body smiled; and, as this took place within a twelvemonth from the first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General’s cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it.

There was a great deal of good sense in all this; but there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power;

To compose a letter which might at once do justice to her sentiments and her situation, convey gratitude without servile regret, be guarded without coldness, and honest without resentment—a letter which Eleanor might not be pained by the perusal of—and, above all, which she might not blush herself, if Henry should chance to see, was an undertaking

Catherine’s disposition was not naturally sedentary, nor had her habits been ever very industrious; but whatever might hitherto have been her defects of that sort, her mother could not but perceive them now to be greatly increased. She could neither sit still, nor employ herself for ten minutes together, walking round the garden and orchard again a

She was assured of his affection; and that heart in return was solicited, which, perhaps, they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothi

The kindness, the earnestness of Eleanor’s manner in pressing her to stay, and Henry’s gratified look on being told that her stay was determined, were such sweet proofs of her importance with them, as left her only just so much solicitude as the human mind can never do comfortably without.

Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney—and castles and abbies made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill.

Godmersham Park, Kent, the home of Jane Austen’s brother Edward. Her visits there undoubtedly aided her in imagining and describing grand houses like Northanger Abbey.

Woodston, it is implied, is where Henry is the incumbent local clergyman. The reason, confirmed later, he can still make Northanger half his home, and spend many weeks in Bath, is that he has a curate, a clergyman hired by the incumbent to perform some or all of the work in the parish. Many clergymen hired curates, in part because the abundance of