Northanger Abbey is an entertaining coming-of-age story about Catherine Morland, an innocent seventeen-year-old from a country parsonage. While spending time in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her plots are fundamentally comic and highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.