Chapter VII -  Satires on The Novel of Terror

Jane Austen's raillery in Northanger Abbey; Barrett's mockery in The Heroine; Peacock's Nightmare Abbey; his praise of C.B. Brown in Gryll Grange; The Mystery of the Abbey, and its misleading title; Crabbe's satire in Belinda Waters and The Preceptor Husband; his ironical attack on the sentimental heroine in The Borough; his appreciation of folktales; Sir Eustace Grey .

A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to be expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published The Italian, Jane Austen had completed her Northanger Abbey , ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that for the Mysteries of Udolpho Mrs. Radcliffe received £500, and for The Italian £800; while for the manuscript of Northanger Abbey, the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of £10, selling it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.

The contrast in market value is significant. The publisher, who, it may be added, was not necessarily a literary critic, probably realised that if the mock romance were successful, its tendency would be to endanger the popularity of the prevailing mode in fiction. Hence for many years it was concealed as effectively as if it had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys.

Among Jane Austen's early unpublished writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly romances"; but her spirited defence of the novelist's art in Northanger Abbey is clear evidence that her raillery is directed not against fiction in general, but rather against such "horrid" stories as those included in the list supplied to Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the sweetest creatures in the world."