Ann Radcliffe

09 July 1764 - 07 February 1823

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.

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Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
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. 1: 761 Jane Austen
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. Frederick S. Frank
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...
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...
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...
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...
Publishing	Regina Maria Roche	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.
Reception	Elizabeth Isabella Spence	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. 213 Critic Shareen Robinson describes this novel as...
Reception	Susan Ferrier	SF 's protagonists were included with those of Jane Austen , Frances Burney , Amelia Opie , Ann Radcliffe and others in W. D. Howells 's Heroines of Fiction, 1901.
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...

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