JANE AUSTEN DID NOT consider the novel we know as Northanger Abbey to be fit for publication.1 After she had bought it back in 1816 from the publisher to whom - as Susan - it had been sold thirteen years before, she attempted some revision, but put it, shortly before she died, 'upon the shelve for the present'.2 One is glad it was brought down again, for besides being an accomplished burlesque of a literary fashion, it contains much of Jane Austen's characteristic strength.