Book Thoughts: Austen's Northanger Abbey: Her first novel, yet the last published. Why?

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's first novel (outside of her juvenile works) was the last  Austen book published.  Why?  The answers give some important clues to the deeper meaning in the book.

According to Claire Grogan in an introduction to Northanger Abbey there are two separate delays to the publishing of the book.  The first delay, and the longest, was occasioned by the publisher and lasted from the original purchase date of 1803 until Austen regained rights to her novel in 1816.  For some reason, the publisher purchased the novel and then refused to print it. The second delay was due to Austen herself delaying the publication.  It is interesting to note that this second delay is of a shorter duration (Northanger Abbey was published in 1817) only because her death allowed her brother to publish the novel posthumously; Austen herself expressed ambiguity about ever publishing Northanger Abbey.

It is pointed out that the publisher, Crosby, may have had several reasons for delaying publication.  Critics agree that Austen’s opinions of issues such as individual rights, the questionable intellectual faculties  of women, and the merging of some parts of the middle class with the upper class, while pertinent to the late 1700s, would not have met with as much public sympathy in the early 1800s.  Critic Park Honan also cites conflict of interest as a possible reason for delay of publication.  Since Crosby also published The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (a novel in the Gothic tradition) and Austen satirizes the Gothic novel in her own book, there may well have been a hesitancy to publish Northanger Abbey in the same time period.  Another critic, Margaret Kirkham, suggests Austen’s support of feminist views as a reason to delay publication. 

Austen also appeared reluctant to publish her novel.  She was aware that her opinions regarding the feminist movement, as expressed in the book, were no longer accepted in 1816 (although theses thoughts may have been more acceptable in the late 1700s when she was writing the novel).  This was due in large part to the fact that English anti-revolutionary feeling opposed such thinking. Women authors were not generally approved and general opinion was even lower toward female authors who wrote novels because novel reading was thought to increase women's sentimentality.  Social, economic, and political thought had shifted in the years between the novel’s writing and its potential publication, and while Austen’s views had not necessarily changed she must have realized these views might face opposition.

There were many changes that occurred in English Society between the original manuscript completion of Northanger Abbey and its eventual publication in 1818. The revolution in France greatly impacted the English and led to more acts of repression and censorship, of which a specific example is censorship toward female authors of novels.  During this time the public displayed an increasing lack of sympathy for women as far as allowing them intellectual or economic freedom or political opinions. Austen plainly states her support of female authors of novels and of novels themselves in chapter five of Northanger Abbey when she breaks off from describing the relationship between Catherine and Louisa to urge female authors to stand together against unfair opposition.  She also defends novels as giving more pleasure to the public than other forms of literature and further states that some novels have “genius, wit and taste to recommend them.”  Realizing such ideas would not be received kindly by much of her reading audience may have caused Austen to postpone publishing Northanger Abbey.