Gothic novels inspired the first book ever published by Jane Austen and became a focus of literary detective work when seven titles she described as 'horrid' in Northanger Abbey were discovered to be actual novels of her time, and not just coined titles she had invented.

In Northanger Abbey, Austen satirizes the Gothic novels that were immensely popular in her time by inventing a character named Catherine Morland, a 17 year old girl who not only reads Gothic tales religiously, but who begins to weave the fearful expectations inherent in the genre into her daily life.

Catherine is invited to stay with friends at Northanger Abbey, and her runaway imagination reads frightening implications into a series of unexplained occurrences in the otherwise harmless seeming estate.

At one point in the story, an acquaintance recommends to Catherine a list of seven Gothic novels which have come to be known as 'The Northanger horrid novels.' (In Austen's day the term 'horrid' was meant for something delightfully fearful or shocking.) Ann Radcliffe's Gothic classic The Mysteries of Udolpho is also mentioned in Austen's Northanger Abbey.