This playful short novel is the one that most resembles Jane Austen's Juvenilia. It is the story of the unsophisticated and sincere Catherine Morland on her first trip away from home, for a stay in Bath. There she meets the entertaining Henry Tilney; later, on a visit to his family's house (the "Northanger Abbey" of the title) she learns to distinguish between the highly charged calamities of Gothic fiction and the realities of ordinary life (which can also be distressing in their way). Like Jane Austen's Love and Friendship, this book makes fun of the conventions of many late 18^th century literary corks, with their highly wrought and unnatural emotions; some of this humour derives from the contrast between Catherine Morland and the conventional heroines of novels of the day.

An early version of the book was written under the title Susan (in 1798-99 according to Cassandra). It was actually the first of Jane Austen's novels sold to a publisher (a publisher named Crosby bought it in 1803 for ?10). He advertised it as forthcoming, but never issued it. Jane Austen had the manuscript bought back more than ten years later, after several of her other novels had been published, and apparently made some revisions, but finally "put it on the shel[f]" (letter of March 13, 1816). It was only after her death in 1817 that her brother Henry finally had it published (together with Persuasion). The title "Northanger Abbey" was not chosen by Jane Austen (she referred to the book in her letter as "Miss Catherine").

The intention of Northanger Abbey is satiric; the naiv protagonist is first introduced to the pleasures and to the Bath confusion in times of the Regency and to the wonderful friend's residence after. Her adventures are used as a pretext to laugh at 18^th century novelists' conventions, especially at Mrs. Radcliffe Gothic novels.