SOURCE: "The Sympathetic Imagination: Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility," in Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development, Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 58-83.

In the following excerpt, Litz examines complexity of theme and uneveness of narrative technique in Northanger Abbey.

Viewed as a whole, Northanger Abbey is certainly the earliest of Jane Austen's major works. Although it was begun in 1798 after the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice had been written, both of these novels underwent radical revision shortly before their publication in 1811 and 1813, while Jane Austen's Advertisement to Northanger Abbey states that it was "finished in the year 1803." There is some possibility that the novel was touched up after 1803, but these revisions could not have been extensive; and we are justified in taking Northanger Abbey as the only major work that was completely a product of the first half of Jane Austen's...