Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ann Radcliffe
-
Standard Name: Radcliffe, Ann
Birth Name: Ann Ward
Married Name: Ann Radcliffe
Pseudonym: The Author of A Sicilian Romance
Pseudonym: Adeline
AR
is well known as the mistress par excellence of eighteenth-century Gothic fiction, the continuing tradition of which she strongly marked with the characteristics of her individual style. She also produced poetry, travel writing, and criticism. She apparently wrote for her own enjoyment, not because she needed the money, and after five novels in seven years she stopped publishing. She held aloof from the company of other literary people, and kept her private life from the public eye.
Her range of reference runs from Pope
on the one hand to, on the other, Ann Radcliffe
and an anonymous answerer of Hannah More
, the author of Nubilia in Search of a Husband.
Forster, E. M., and Eliza Fay. “Introductory Note”. Original Letters from India, Hogarth Press, pp. 7-24.
A review in La Belle Assemblée called this a Radcliffean
imitation which its author need not be ashamed of.
Green, Sarah. “Introduction: Romantic Reading and Writing: The Creation and Consumption of the Early Nineteenth-Century Novel; A Note on the Text”. Romance Readers and Romance Writers, edited by Christopher Goulding, Pickering and Chatto, p. ix - xxii, xxix-xxxi.
x
Textual Features
Sarah Green
This preface is headed by two Latin words (one with a faulty grammatical ending) from Ovid
's description of chaos. SG
slams both male and female novelists, chiefly authors of gothic or horrid novels and...
Textual Features
Sarah Green
The plot owes something to Charlotte Lennox
's Female Quixote. The father of Green's heroine has lived through many crazes for novelists: first Burney
, then Radcliffe
, then Owenson
, then Rosa Matilda
Education
Sarah Josepha Hale
Sarah Josepha Buell (later SJH
) was taught at home by her mother, with her father and her brother Horatio
(then a law student) joining in for such higher branches of learning as writing, Latin...
Textual Features
Jane Harvey
This too begins like a guidebook. JH
quotes Ann Radcliffe
, and mentions the celebrated Lady Anne Clifford
, the castle's best-known owner.
Harvey, Jane. Brougham Castle. A. K. Newman.
1: 5
Lady Anne died at Brougham, one of the best-loved...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Hays
MH
's preface explains her intention of examining the power of the passions in action, on the model of Godwin
's Caleb Williams. She also compliments Ann Radcliffe
. She defends the worth of...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Hervey
The Critical Review once again praised the style and characters. It judged the novel too long and its plot too complicated, but that the whole was certainly superior to the majority of flimsy publications of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Barbara Hofland
BH
also pays much attention in her poems to other writers. Stanzas to the River Don footnotes Wortley Hall as a former home of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
.
Hofland, Barbara. Poems. Printed by J. Montgomery, and sold by Vernor and Hood.
6-11 and n
Ode to Apathy...
Intertextuality and Influence
Henry James
Ann Radcliffe
's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Charlotte Brontë
's Jane Eyre have been cited as possible sources.
Gale, Robert L. A Henry James Encyclopedia. Greenwood.
682
Friends, Associates
Ann Jebb
A particular sparring partner of AJ
, who would attack her boldest reasoning, with his quaint and lively repartees, was the young William Paley
, later an eminent theologian.
Meadley, George William. “Memoir of Mrs. Jebb”. The Monthly Repository, Vol.
Wilkes, Joanne. “’Only the broken music’? The Critical Writings of Maria Jane Jewsbury”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 1, pp. 105-18.
115
Textual Features
Maria Jane Jewsbury
MJJ
used the Athenæum to express her opinions on women's writing. A review of Anna Maria Hall
's Sketches of Irish Character criticizes the author's erroneous ambition
