书名：Northanger Abbey诺桑觉寺
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1180
作者：Jane Austen
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2008
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451530844
商品尺寸：10.7 x 1.8 x 17.5 cm
包装：简装
页数：256 （以实物为准）

Northanger Abbey《诺桑觉寺》是英国女作家简奥斯汀所创作的首部小说作品，但在其去世后才发表。书中，奥斯汀用犀利的语言和鲜明的人物形象，以一个普通家庭女孩的视角，向读者展现了19世纪上层社会的缩影。看似描述贵族的日常生活，实质上是对当时社会的一些讽刺。
推荐理由：
1.各大推荐书单榜上有名，值得文学爱好者收藏和研读；
2.简奥斯汀的第一部作品，语言鲜明，手法尖锐，是19世纪文学史的重要里程碑；
3.该书创作背景为英国社会转变时期，读者可从独特的视角了解当时的社会情形；
4.语言简练易懂，适合想要提高英语写作、阅读水平的读者；
5.全书印刷清晰，体积轻巧，适合随身携带，随时阅读。

Jane Austen’s brilliant satire of the gothic novel.
The most sprightly and satirical of Austen’s novels,Northanger Abbeywas written when the author was herself in her early twenties, and takes for its heroine seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, a spirited young woman preoccupied with the pleasures of dressing, dancing, and reading sensational novels. But when she visits Northanger Abbey, the ancestral home of handsome Henry Tilney, Catherine’s taste in books comes back to haunt her. The rambling house full of locked doors and the family’s mysterious history give rise to delightfully dreadful suspicions, and finally only Catherine’s sweet nature and good humor triumph over her susceptibility. A sly commentary on the power of literature as well as a cautionary tale about the perils of naïveté,Northanger Abbeyis a fresh and funny tale of one young woman receiving, as Margaret Drabble reveals in her illuminating introduction, “intensive instruction in the ways of the world.”
With an Introduction by Margaret Drabbleand an Afterword by Stephanie Laurens

Catherine Morland has an ordinary life and a feverish imagination. When she gets invited to Bath, Catherine is immersed in a world of elaborate balls and handsome men. When one suitor takes her to his family estate, Northanger Abbey, Catherine becomes mired in a world of fact and fantasy. Is there a dark mystery behind the locked doors of Northanger Abbey? Why has her budding romance suddenly been cut short?

Jane Austenwas an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels which interpret, critique and comment upon the life of the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Her most highly praised novel during her lifetime wasPride and Prejudice, her second published novel. Austen’s plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security.

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard—and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence besides two good livings—and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more—to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features—so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy’s plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities—her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat the “Beggar’s Petition”; and after all, her next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that Catherine was always stupid -- by no means; she learnt the fable of “The Hare and Many Friends” as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn music; and Catherine was sure she should like it, for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinner; so, at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear it; and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Catherine’s life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one another. Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable character!—for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.