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.
The usual US and Irish editions followed, plus a French translation. Valancourt Books
of Chicago (a Gothic reprint house named after the hero of Ann Radcliffe
's The Mysteries of Udolpho) has recently re-issued this novel.
Publishing
Catherine Cuthbertson
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...
Occupation
Sophia Lee
In 1795 SL
subscribed, as Miss Lee of Belvedere and clearly for the use of the school, to James Marshall's Library
of Bath, a circulating library with a comparatively small proportion of fiction in its...
Literary responses
Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson
George Saintsbury
in 1913 developed an attack on this book as very nearly consummate in badness. . . . a fair example of the worst imitations of Mrs. Radcliffe
and Matthew Lewis
conjointly, though without...
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...
Literary responses
Regina Maria Roche
The Critical Review was reminded unpleasantly of Ann Radcliffe
(from whom, indeed, says Rictor Norton
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, passages are lifted without acknowledgement).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
The Critical summed up this novel as...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Meeke
The notice in the Critical Review betrayed impatience with this novel: it was particularly displeased with the proliferation of dukes and duchesses, marquisses and marchionesses, the bad grammar, and the libellous view of the abodes...
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
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,
