∗a girl remade by novels she shouldn't read

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have sup…

Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very…

She was fond of all boys' plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merel…

She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; and …

∗Austen's delicious send-up of Gothic romance conventions and the power of reading itself: Catherine Morland is shaped more by novels than sense, and Austen rewards those attuned to irony, wit, and the gap between literary fantasy and quotidian life.

An ingénue shaped by Gothic novels discovers reality far differs from her literary imagination.