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.
In her general overview of the history of English literature during these centuries, she focuses especially on English poets because as she says, great poets not only give form, power and beauty to a nation's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Matilda Betham
Here already MMB
evinces her interest in women's literary history: her topics include praise for writers including Ann Radcliffe
and the Ladies of Llangollen (Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
). One of the...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Maria Mackenzie
AMM
's opening address To the Readers of Modern Romance says that ancient romance was put paid to by the new source of amusement . . . struck out by Henry Fielding
and Richardson
(to...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Maria Riddell
The diary records some of her literary tastes: she copied there a letter expressing her dislike of tragedies (which, no matter how moral, she felt to be harmful to the mind because of the violent...
In 1856, CR
published an historical short story, The Lost Titian, in The Crayon, a small magazine published in New York.
Smulders, Sharon. Christina Rossetti Revisited. Twayne.
100
Marsh, Jan. Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life. Viking.
176-9
. She also wrote some non-fiction on Italian writers (including...
Textual Production
Joanna Southcott
Having had her attention drawn to Ann Radcliffe
's The Romance of the Forest, JS
wrote (or received as dictated by the Spirit) a lengthy prose-and-verse commentary.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
90-1
Textual Production
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
HMB
's letters to Sarah Ponsonby
reveal the closeness of their friendship. She sent information, opinion, and verse, some of it probably written by herself. Among books she discussed were Ann Radcliffe
's The Mysteries...
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.
At the time of its appearance, MAR
was not yet a published author. At the time of its ascription to her, she had published in defence in women, while Ann Radcliffe
had completed her whole...
Textual Production
Rose Tremain
It was the herculean school project of putting on a dramatic adaptation of Ann Radcliffe
's Udolpho that first give RT
(who thought of herself at the time as a visual artist like her sister)...
Textual Production
Mary Ann Radcliffe
Again she was a published author by the time of the ascription, but not at the time of the publication, and only of material quite unlike this highly-coloured fiction. Contemporary comment on both these novels...
Textual Production
Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson
As Miss Wilkinson, SSW
published Convent of Grey Penitents; or, The Apostate Nun. A Romance.
The sub-title had appeared already the previous year on a chapbook entitled The Mysterious Novice; or, Convent of...
Timeline
9 July 1775: Matthew Gregory Lewis, later famous as the...
Writing climate item
9 July 1775
Matthew Gregory Lewis
, later famous as the leading Gothic novelist of horror, was born on the eleventh birthday of Ann Radcliffe
, leading Gothic novelist of terror.
By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...
Women writers item
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford
published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
9 July 1798: George Canning, writing in the Anti-Jacobin,...
Women writers item
9 July 1798
George Canning
, writing in the Anti-Jacobin, lambasted sensibility as a literary mode stemming from France, from Rousseau
, and from diseased fancy, effeminacy, and self-obsession.
1804: The publisher George, George, and John Robinson,...
1814: John Colin Dunlop published The History of...
Writing climate item
1814
John Colin Dunlop
published The History of Fiction: Being a Critical Account of the Most Celebrated Prose Works of Fiction, from the Earliest Greek Romances to the Novels of the Present Age.
Early 1818: William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets,...
Writing climate item
Early 1818
William Hazlitt
opened On the Living Poets, the last of his Lectures on the English Poets, with a statement on gender issues.
Texts
Radcliffe, Ann. A Journey made in the Summer of 1794. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1795.
Radcliffe, Ann. A Sicilian Romance. T. Hookham, 1790.
Radcliffe, Ann. Gaston de Blondeville. Henry Colburn, 1826.
Radcliffe, Ann. “Introduction and Explanatory Notes”. A Sicilian Romance, edited by Alison Milbank, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. Various Pages.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. T. Hookham, 1789.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Italian. T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies , 1797.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Mysteries of Udolpho. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1794.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Poems of Mrs. A. Radcliffe. J. Bouden, 1815.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Romance of the Forest. T. Hookham and J. Carpenter, 1791.