Book Corner 2020.17

Northanger Abbey: an Annotated Edition

Jane Austen at her best – so much better than the humorless MANSFIELD PARK, whose annotated edition I read earlier this year. Jane as narrator is just a barrel of laughs in this one. I bookmarked a few of my favorite quotes.

“Mrs. Allen immediately recognized the features of a former schoolfellow and intimate, whom she had seen only once since their respective marriages, and that many years ago. Their joy on this meeting was very great, as well it might, since they had been contented to know nothing of each other for the last fifteen years.”

“It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull or the jackonet.”

“The expectations of his friend Morland, from the first over-rated, had ever since his introduction to Isabella, been gradually increasing; and by merely adding twice as much for the grandeur of the moment, by doubling what he chose to think the amount of Mr. Morland’s preferment, trebling his private fortune, bestowing a rich aunt, and sinking half the children, he was able to represent the whole family to the General in a most respectable light.”

The annotations are mostly excellent. Quibble, after a while it felt like they became downright harping on the lack of feminine power in Austen’s society, constantly conjecturing whether in this passage or that she was commenting on it, insinuating on it, etc. ( )

Check that out – one curve, for one day, in one state, has been flattened!