Might the long-forgotten Gothic parody More Ghosts! (1798), published by the Minerva Press and attributed to a Mrs. F. C. Patrick, have been one of the influences on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818)? The essay argues that while there is no direct evidence showing that Austen read More Ghosts!, a strong circumstantial case can be made for her familiarity with it: Patrick’s novel anticipates Northanger Abbey not only generically and thematically, but in specific textual details and authorial strategies. The timing of the publication of More Ghosts! and Austen’s famously eclectic reading habits further support the possibility that Patrick’s book was one of Austen’s models when she began to write her own Gothic parody in the late 1790s.

See article at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2026.2680701