The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not…

In chapter 14 of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland walks round Beechen Cliff, above Bath, with Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor. The hill reminds her of the south of France, as described in The Mysteries of Udolpho. Then she supposes that Henry never reads novels, since they are not “clever enough” for him: “gentlemen read better books.”

Henry adds that he has read all of Mrs Radcliffe’s works, most of them with great pleasure: once he had begun Udolpho, he could not put it down, and finished it in two days, “my hair standing on end the whole time”. Eleanor confirms it: when she was called away for five minutes, he ran off with the volume rather than wait for her.

Austen wrote the novel in the late 1790s; it appeared after her death, in 1817. Through Henry she defends a genre that was often looked down on, as she does in her own voice in chapter 5, where novels are works “in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed”.

Northanger Abbey, Chapter 14 (Henry Tilney), 1817

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