I don’t know if you can review a book you’ve read twice and you really love, but I’d nonetheless like to share my delight in re-reading one of my favourite Austen novels.

I picked up this beautiful edition at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath in something of a Regency-induced dream and promptly decided that it would be the perfect comfortable classic to re-read over Christmas. (No Little Women for me this year, I’m afraid.)

I have to admit that I really love Catherine Morland as a heroine and I see so much of myself in her. She reads too many novels (not a thing), and she’s quick to believe in fancy, with a vivid imagination. Austen pastiches the Gothic genre so well through her innocent eyes, and however drearily didactic the end is, there’s something to be said in Austen propagating something of a sensibleness and wisdom when it comes to life, and romance.

I’m still waiting for the Hollywood adaption of this film – I think it would be great – all lighting bolts across dark and gloomy castles, and scenes of Catherine running urgently through the streets of Bath to try and reach Henry and Eleanor Tilney and tell them that she hadn’t missed their appointment(!). In many ways I think it is so much more dramatic than Austen’s other novels, and I love it in its uniqueness amongst her works.

For now I guess I’ll have to go and watch the Felicity Jones TV adaption and dream away, I suppose…

“Oh! Who could ever be tired of Bath?”