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.
Their school, together with their literary careers, brought SL
and her sisters a wide circle of friends and contacts, including Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
. The novelist Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins describes Sophia as surrounded...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sophia Lee
The Recess was highly influential: in its basic technique of inserting fictive persons among actual historical ones, in its polarization of Elizabeth
and Mary
, and in its heavily sentimental tone. Writers directly influenced by...
Literary responses
Lady Caroline Lamb
Reviewers were anything but indifferent. The New Monthly Magazine thought the title character ably and vigorously drawn and the book therefore a moral one: a fearful beacon to warn the young and inexperienced. But the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sophia King
SK
set her birth name to this novel, which she presumably arranged for before her wedding in July. The British Library
has a copy, N 2048. SK
provides a spirited preface on the part played...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Kennedy
MK
found the inspiration for this novel in Jane Austen
's satire of gothic melodrama, Northanger Abbey. The tragic melodrama of this novel's love stories, however, brings it closer to the actual gothic tradition...
Literary responses
Isabella Kelly
The Critical made a basic misjudgement of The Abbey of St. Asaph (seemingly paying more attention to title than to content): it listed all the appurtenances of the Radcliffe
an novel, with which it said...
Literary responses
Isabella Kelly
This novel was praised by the British Critic as entitled to no mean place among the better productions of this description.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
The interesting characters, gripping incident, and unaffected language were singled out for praise.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
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
Athenæum. J. Lection.
182 (1831): 262
in attempting to portray villains...
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.
7
, pp. 597 - 604, 661.
598
She formed another close and...
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
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...
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...
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...
