"The Annotated Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapard)

I'm halfway through my ongoing quest to read all these annotated Austen editions!  The #JaneAustenDeepDive reading group on Instagram has been a continual delight, and the two-months-per-book pace has been perfect for me to read these detailed and informative editions.  

I think I learned more from The Annotated Northanger Abbey than from the Pride and Prejudice or the Sense and Sensibility, largely because this one explained alllllll the allusions to popular novels that Austen makes throughout the book.  One day, I will read some of the books she talks about, just to more fully understand this one.

Northanger Abbey remains tied with Pride and Prejudice as my second-favorite Jane Austen.  Up next for our group read-along is Mansfield Park, which is my least-favorite Austen.  I'm hoping that reading the annotated edition will help me appreciate it better.

If you don't know, this book is about a young woman who loves to read Gothic romance books, that era's version of romantic suspense, basically.  She travels to a resort town with some friends of her family, where she makes new friends and forms an attachment with a charming man with a great sense of humor.  But she lets her imagination start to run away from her sometimes, and has to learn to differentiate between fact and fiction.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild bad language in the text, and PG-13 for the annotations, which talk about sexual mores and attitudes at the time.