Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

Matthew Francis’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s first novel wryly dramatizes Catherine Morland’s romantic fantasy world alongside her real one, capturing Austen’s acerbic irony in witty dialogue and narration.

Catherine Morland – brought up in a sleepy provincial parsonage – is suddenly introduced to the complicated world of a “season” at Bath. Overwhelmed, she tries to make sense of her new environment by referring to the gothic romances which have been her all-consuming passion at home. Believing “society” to be very much as author Anne Radcliffe describes it in her novel The Mysteries of Udolpho, Catherine makes a number of alarming miscalculations about personalities and relationships. Of course, she ultimately survives, thanks principally to the indulgence of her author.