Northanger Abbey was adapted for BBC television in
1986. Katharine Schlesinger played the young and impressionable
heroine, Catherine Morland, opposite Peter Firth as Henry Tilney.
The costumes were designed by Nicholas Rocker.
Nicholas’s flamboyant designs wonderfully reinforce the mood of
heightened drama that the production captures. Catherine is an avid
reader of bloodcurdling Gothic novels; and the world is seen
through her romantic young eyes.
During the period that the book was written, stiff brocaded silks
had now gone out of fashion and a new fabric had taken the world by
storm: muslin. Catherine wears a lot of light, floating muslin,
which suits her youth and innocence. Examples of original dress in
the exhibition showed three types of
muslin.
Dress of blue and white woven silk worn by
Katharine Schlesinger as Catherine Morland