Isabella: Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished The Mysteries of Udolpho, we will read The Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.
[...]
Catherine: ...but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?
Isabella: Yes, quite sure, for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every one of them.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, chapter VI
Several Gothic novels and authors are mentioned in the book, including Fanny Burney and The Monk.[60] Isabella Thorpe gives Catherine a list of seven books that are commonly referred to as the "Northanger 'horrid' novels".[61] These works were later thought to be of Austen's own invention until the British writers Montague Summers and Michael Sadleir re-discovered in the 1920s that the novels actually did exist.[62] The list is as follows:
- Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) by Eliza Parsons. London: Minerva Press.
- Clermont (1798) by Regina Maria Roche. London: Minerva Press.
- The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale (1796) by Eliza Parsons. London: Minerva Press.
- The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) by "Lawrence Flammenberg" (pseudonym for Karl Friedrich Kahlert; translated by "Peter Teuthold," pseudonym for Peter Will). London: Minerva Press.
- The Midnight Bell (1798) by Francis Lathom. London: H. D. Symonds.
- The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath. London: Minerva Press. Tenille Nowak has noted that critics and editors of Northanger Abbey often suggest that the names Laurentina and St Aubin appearing in the text are misrememberings of character names from Udolpho; Nowak observes that due to there being very few copies of The Orphan of the Rhine available these critics did not realise that the names actually appear in their exact form in Sleath's novel.[63] Nowak observes other instances where Sleath's novel is echoed by Austen, particularly in her descriptions of place.[63]
- Horrid Mysteries (1796), which is an abridged translation by Peter Will of Carl Grosse's The Genius. London: Minerva Press. (Marquis de Grosse's The Genius or the Mysterious Adventures of Don Carlos de Grandez was later translated by Joseph Trapp in 2 volumes. London: Allen and West, No. 15 Paternoster Row.)
All seven of these were republished by the Folio Society in London in the 1960s, and since 2005 Valancourt Books has released new editions of the "horrids", the seventh and final being released in 2015.[64]
The Mysteries of Udolpho
The most significant allusion, however, is to Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, as it is the Gothic novel most frequently mentioned within this text. Notably, Jane Austen sold the manuscript of Northanger Abbey to the same firm that published Radcliffe's novel in 1794.[27]
This outside text is first mentioned in Chapter Six, when Isabella and Catherine discuss the mystery "behind the black veil", and further establish their friendship based on their similar interests in novel genre and their plans to continue reading other Gothic novels together. Austen further satirizes the novel through Catherine's stay at Northanger Abbey, believing that General Tilney has taken the role of Gothic novel villain.[9]
Austen's discussion of Udolpho is also used to clearly separate Catherine and the Tilney siblings from John Thorpe, as when Catherine talks about the novel with him, he crudely responds that he "never reads novels" but qualifies his statement by arguing he would only read a novel by Ann Radcliffe, who is the author of Udolpho.[27] Here, Austen humorously categorizes Northanger Abbey's characters into two spheres: those who read novels, and those who do not. When Catherine and Henry Tilney later discuss reading novels, and Henry earnestly responds that he enjoys reading novels, and was especially titillated by Udolpho, the match between Catherine and Henry is implied as both smart and fitting.[27]
