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.
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 Production
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
was pursuing the idea of dramatising Ann Radcliffe
's posthumous novel, Gaston de Blondeville; two months later she had her version drafted.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 60-1, 62-3
Textual Features
Vita Sackville-West
VSW
has a sharp eye for women in history, for non-noble individuals who touched the story of Knole. As well as queens, duchesses, and countesses, she provides lively sketches of the actresses Nell Gwyn
and...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The series has a general introduction, On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing, and a Preface, Biographical and Critical for each novelist, which in its echo of the full and original title of Johnson's...
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 Murray
Murray then divides her volume into three parts: A Guide to the Lakes . . . and . . . the West Riding of Yorkshire, A Guide to the Beauties of Scotland, 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
Textual Features
Eliza Parsons
The story is set in Germany (which at this date was seen in England as the land of romance)
Hoeveler, Diane Long, and Eliza Parsons. “Introduction”. The Castle of Wolfenbach, edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Diane Long Hoeveler, Valancourt Books, p. vii - xvii.
x
and the heroine, Matilda Weimar, appears to be German, though she turns out to...
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...
Textual Features
Jane West
JW
uses heroic couplets for formal poems like To the Island of Sicily (on the retreat of the king and queen of the Two Sicilies before the French Army of Italy, commanded by Napoleon
...
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...
Textual Features
Mary Julia Young
MJY
foregrounds her own friendship with Anna Maria Crouch, and finds room for such details as the opinions of Crouch's father, Peregrine Phillips
, about novelists: he admired Charlotte Smith
, Anna Maria Bennett
,...
Rictor Norton
says that this text is derivative from Ann Radcliffe
's A Sicilian Romance.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
207
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.
