Episode 351: Best of Series – Northanger Abbey, Intro and Ch. 1-2

This week on The Literary Life podcast we bring you an episode from our vault, the opening of a series from Season 1 all about Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. For this introductory episode, Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford are joined by Thomas Banks. Together they discuss the advent of the novel as a form, as well as some predecessors of Austen.

Angelina points out Austen’s satirical voice in poking fun at the sentimental novel in the first few chapters. She also encourages us to look for the real life dangers the main characters encounter in contrast to those sensations of the popular sentimental or gothic novel. Furthermore, we ought to notice who is reading various genres of literature and what that says about those characters.

Cindy and Angelina also talk about Jane Austen’s writing and her economy of style and the lasting quality of her books. Along with criticism of sensationalism, Austen also adds a healthy dose of criticism of the education given young women in her day. We also learn that this is a novel of development as we watch Catherine Moorland learn her way around the world.

Don’t forget to head over to House of Humane Letters to check out the upcoming fall webinars, the 2027 Literary Life Online Conference, and the HHL annual sale coming up November 21-December 31, 2026. Also, Cindy has a new “Advent to Epiphany” group Morning Time coming up in December now open for registration at MorningTimeforMoms.com.

Listen to The Literary Life:

Commonplace Quotes

It is the most difficult of all the lessons of the Gospels that good and bad, for a time, often look very much alike and that it is difficult to distinguish them.
Christopher Hollis

In a utilitarian age of all times, it is a matter of great importance that fairy tales should be respected. A nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will hold a great place under the sun. To preserve them in their usefulness, they much be as much preserved in their simplicity and purity and innocent extravagance as if they were actual fact. Whoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty to overthinking, of an active presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him. Imagine a total abstinence edition of Robinson Crusoe with the rum left out. Imagine a peace edition with the gunpowder left out and the rum left out. Imagine a vegetarian edition with the goats’ flesh left out. Robinson Crusoe would be edited out of his island in a hundred years and the island would be swallowed up in the editorial ocean.
Charles Dickens, from “Frauds on the Fairies“

The chief job of the teacher is to help us remember all that we have forgotten.

One of the great sorrows which came to human beings when Adam and Eve left the garden was the loss of memory, memory of all that God’s children are meant to be.
Madeleine L’Engle, from Walking on Water

The Dying Christian to His Soul

by Alexander Pope

Vital spark of heav’nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond, Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

Book List:

Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Pamela by Samuel Richardson

Fanny Burney

George Eliot

Malcolm by George MacDonald

Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliff

Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

Othello by William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

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Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also!

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