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.
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...
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...
Literary responses
Sarah Green
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
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.
This is a novel strong in piety as well as in sentiment. Its title-page quotes from Ann Radcliffe
. The heroine, Miss Lousia Riversdale, relates her story in journal letters to her brother Sir Harry...
Literary responses
Charlotte Dacre
Zofloya was widely reviewed and its language widely condemned as bombastical—probably reflecting unease at its rampant female sexuality. Shocked reviews included those in the Literary Journal and Monthly Literary Recreations, though the Morning...
Publishing
Catherine Cuthbertson
It came out in four volumes from Robinson
, but many copies were burned in a warehouse fire. After this The Lady's Magazine reprinted it as a serial beginning in February 1804.
Mayo, Robert. The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740-1815. Northwestern University Press.
232
Robinson re-issued...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Cuthbertson
The mode is that of Ann Radcliffe
. The names of the characters are all Italian, though the French or Spanish setting implied by the title is reflected in the appearance in the text of...
Reception
Helen Craik
Apparently the only journal to notice Adelaide de Narbonne was the Anti-Jacobin in January 1800: it wished that Craik had not left her own political stance inexplicit.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, pp. 193-32.
In a preface CC
says she found the incident that forms the centre of this novel in The Christian Life by Dr John Scott
(that is The Christian Life, from its beginning to its consummation...
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
