"The terror of Northanger Abbey"

I found this scan of a 1965 edition of Northanger Abbey at Pemberley's Jane Austen Info Page. If it's too small to see, it's worth clicking to see the details.

This is the most hilariously inaccurate packaging I've seen since the trailer that depicted Shining as a romantic comedy. As those who have read Northanger Abbey know (and if you haven't read it, you should!), the novel is much more a parody of a gothic novel than a gothic novel itself. I can't help thinking that anyone who bought this book because of its cover would be flabbergasted to read 100-plus pages (out of a 200-page novel) of Catherine vacationing, flirting and taking walks in Bath before the title abbey is even mentioned. And who is the brooding man on the cover? He looks too young to be the General, the only genuinely sketchy character in the novel. Is it supposed to be Tilney, the man who likes to tease others about their grammar and who can be genial about anything, even Catherine's belief that his father may be a murderer? Finally, this looks like there was some exciting pursuit at night, which...is false. The only time Catherine ventures outside the abbey is during relaxing morning walks with Eleanor, her friend whose story is much more gothic than her own.

This cover made my day, though. I plan to show it at the beginning of my class tomorrow. (Hooray for classroom computers with projection screens!)