Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland leads a quiet life in the country where she has become very fond of novels of Gothic romance. In her first excursion into the wider world, when she travels to Bath with Mr. and Mrs. Allen, she becomes the center of attention of two young men, John Thorpe and Henry Tilney, and is befriended by Isabella Thorpe, a worldly young woman on the lookout for a wealthy husband. Catherine is soon invited by the Tilney family to stay with them at their home, Northanger Abbey. She is very eager to visit a real abbey and imagines it will be darkly sinister, much like those she read about in the Gothic novels. Her expectations lead her to form some unflattering ideas about the family. Fortunately she has her own fundamental good sense and the irresistible but unsentimental Henry Tilney to help her discover the difference between fiction and reality.
