Page "Gothic fiction" Paragraph 42

The excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of the traditional Gothic made it rich territory for satire.

The most famous parody of the Gothic is Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey ( 1818 ) in which the naive protagonist, after reading too much Gothic fiction, conceives herself a heroine of a Radcliffian romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side, though the truth turns out to be much more prosaic.

Jane Austen's novel is valuable for including a list of early Gothic works since known as the Northanger Horrid Novels.

These books, with their lurid titles, were once thought to be the creations of Jane Austen's imagination, though later research by Michael Sadleir and Montague Summers confirmed that they did actually exist and stimulated renewed interest in the Gothic.

They are currently all being reprinted by Valancourt Press.