Northanger Abbey is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic novels written by Jane Austen. Austen was also influenced by Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752). Northanger Abbey was completed in 1803, the first of Austen's novels completed in full, but was published posthumously in 1817 with Persuasion. The story concerns Catherine Morland, the naïve young protagonist, and her journey to a better understanding of herself and of the world around her. How Catherine views the world has been distorted by her fondness for Gothic novels and an active imagination.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1798.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1796.
Elizabeth Meeke was a prolific English author, translator and children's writer, and the stepsister of Frances Burney. She wrote about 30 novels, published by the Minerva Press in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The Princely Abbey of Corvey is a former Benedictine abbey and ecclesiastical principality now in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was one of the half-dozen self-ruling princely abbeys of the Holy Roman Empire from the late Middle Ages until 1792 when Corvey was elevated to a prince-bishopric. Corvey, whose territory extended over a vast area, was in turn secularized in 1803 in the course of the German mediatisation and absorbed into the newly created Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda. Originally built in 822 and 885 and remodeled in the Baroque period, the abbey is an exceptional example of Carolingian architecture, the oldest surviving example of a westwork, and the oldest standing medieval structure in Westphalia. The original architecture of the abbey, with its vaulted hall and galleries encircling the main room, heavily influenced later western Romanesque and Gothic architecture. The inside of the westwork contains the only known wall paintings of ancient mythology with Christian interpretation in Carolingian times. The former abbey church was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.
Minerva Press was a publishing house, notable for creating a lucrative market in sentimental and Gothic fiction, active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was established by William Lane at No 33 Leadenhall Street, London, when he moved his circulating library there in about 1790.
Regina Maria Roche (1764–1845) is considered a minor Gothic novelist, encouraged by the pioneering Ann Radcliffe. However, she was a bestselling author in her own time. The popularity of her third novel, The Children of the Abbey, rivalled that of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho.
Events from the year 1798 in Great Britain. (See also 1798 in Ireland, then a separate kingdom although under the same monarch.)
Samuel McChord Crothers was an American Unitarian minister with The First Parish in Cambridge. He was a popular essayist.
Events from the year 1796 in Great Britain.
Clermont, Regina Maria Roche's 1798 novel, "...is arguably the definitive text of the Gothic novel craze during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries". It was first published by Minerva Press.
Victor of Hesse-Rotenburg was the last Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenburg and the Prince of Corvey from 1815 and Duke of Ratibor from 1821. His namesake was his second cousin King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia.
Elizabeth Anne Le Noir was an English female poet, novelist, and feminist from the romantic period. Raised in a widowed home, Le Noir became interested in literature through opportunities she was given by her mother's step-father; John Newbery. After being employed at the Reading Mercury for some time, Le Noir and her sister eventually inherited it. Le Noir soon became the wife of Jean Baptiste Le Noir, from whom she got her last name. Although she didn't have any children of her own, she educated two of her female relatives. Although Le Noir had many great works, "[s]he is probably better known as the daughter of the famous religious poet Christopher Smart."
Anne Fuller was an Irish novelist in the Gothic genre. She was one of the earliest women writers of Gothic fiction.
Mrs F. C. Patrick was an 18th-century writer of Gothic fiction with at least three novels to her name. She was one of the earliest female writers of Gothic fiction.
The Fürstliche Bibliothek Corvey is a princely library in the Princely Abbey of Corvey, a former Benedictine abbey, near Höxter in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It consists of around 74,000 volumes and is one of the largest and most valuable private libraries in Germany. The library houses one of the world's largest collections of Romantic literature and the largest collection in the world of "popular fiction in English between 1798 and 1834".
Carl Friedrich August Grosse also known as Edouard Romeo Vargas-Bedemar was a German author, translator, aesthetic philosopher, and mineralogist. He is best known for his gothic novel Der Genius, which was translated into English by Peter Will as Horrid Mysteries, subtitled "A Story From the German Of The Marquis Of Grosse" and subsequently referenced by Jane Austen as one of the seven 'horrid novels' in Northanger Abbey. His philosophy focused on the aesthetics of sublimity, following the work of Friedrich Schiller, and provided one of the first philosophical treatments of imagination.
Mary Julia Young was a prolific novelist, poet, translator, and biographer, active in the Romantic period, who published the bulk of her works with market-driven publishers James Fletcher Hughes and William Lane of the Minerva Press. She is of particular interest as an example of a professional woman writer in "a market of mass novel production."
