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 ReginaldMM
praises the work of Ann Radcliffe
and takes her as a model (saying, however, that she does not aspire to rival her). Her story abounds in gothic motifs: convents, secret passages, banditti...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Julia Young
Elinor's father is killed in defence of his daughter's honour.
Young, Mary Julia. The East Indian, or Clifford Priory. Earle and Hemet.
4: 189
She spends time unhappily at Clifford Priory with her skinflint uncle Sir Gervas, who goes to bed at nine, expects Elinor to eat...
Leisure and Society
Eliza Lynn Linton
In London, Eliza Lynn drank in artistic life. She championed the singing of Jenny Lind
against those who preferred Alboni or Malibran. She performed for Samuel Laurence
the role of uninformed art critic or foolometer...
Literary responses
Eleanor Sleath
The Critical Review observed crushingly that vapid and servile imitations like this one were a severe penance for critics who had been seduced by Ann Radcliffe
into admiration for the modern romance.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
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...
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
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...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
On the strength of this novel the Critical Review hailed CS
as less agitating than Ann Radcliffe
, less diverting than Frances Burney
, but more true to nature than either. In the Monthly...
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...
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...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Mackenzie
The Critical Review was unimpressed, classifying this as an inadequate imitation of Radcliffe
, incorporating the apparently obligatory ingredients of cruel German counts, each with two wives—old castles—private doors—sliding panels—banditti—assassins—ghosts &c. This mixture, it...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Mackenzie
It provoked the Critical to extended complaint about the pains of reviewing. Nothing, it said, was so harrassing and tedious as a novel without a plan like this,
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
