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.
Despite some later revision, Northanger Abbey is essentially (like its ancestor Susan) a novel of the 1790s, a spoof of both the gothic and romance modes which were then all the rage. Austen's specific...
Literary responses
Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review assumed the author was male. It thought the versification monotonous but warmly praised both preface and plays.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
24 (1798): 1-22
Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Clara Balfour
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...
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...
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...
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...
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Times did indeed review it, and using the extended metaphor of a hunt, pronounced it a good galloping novel . . . to be enjoyed rather than criticised,
Times. Times Publishing Company.
(18 November 1862): 4
and praised...
Literary responses
Sarah Harriet Burney
Charles Burney
, too, slighted his youngest daughter's work in comparison with the elder's.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. “Editor’s Introduction”. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, edited by Lorna J. Clark, Georgia University Press.
lxii
Jane Austen
later noted that Clarentine seemed good on the first reading, not so good on the second, and unnatural...
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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Damer
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...
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.
