Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey was written in 1803 by the great English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) and published posthumously in 1818. A satire of the Gothic novels that were then popular, it is notable for being one of the first books (perhaps the first) to mention baseball by name, doing so a couple decades before Abner Doubleday. The game, listed as base ball, is mentioned as a hobby of the book's central character, Catherine Morland, when she was 14. Base ball is not mentioned again in the book and the game described likely is significantly different than modern baseball.