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.
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
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
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
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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Austen
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Fay
Her range of reference runs from Pope
on the one hand to, on the other, Ann Radcliffe
and an anonymous answerer of Hannah More
, the author of Nubilia in Search of a Husband.
Forster, E. M., and Eliza Fay. “Introductory Note”. Original Letters from India, Hogarth Press, pp. 7-24.
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Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Kennedy
MK
found the inspiration for this novel in Jane Austen
's satire of gothic melodrama, Northanger Abbey. The tragic melodrama of this novel's love stories, however, brings it closer to the actual gothic tradition...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eleanor Sleath
It is set in a moated castle in seventeenth-century Gascony, with a dissipated Count who mistreats and imprisons his wife, banishes his wife's orphan nephew (the hero, Theodore), and has his niece Adelaide kidnapped...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sophia King
SK
set her birth name to this novel, which she presumably arranged for before her wedding in July. The British Library
has a copy, N 2048. SK
provides a spirited preface on the part played...
Intertextuality and Influence
Harriett Mozley
Among the children, Fanny is a literature-addict, who fancies she would like to be a nun, because a nun is the most unfortunate and interesting creature in the world! . . . they all look...
Intertextuality and Influence
Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Smith
The Critical Review, reviewing this book, called CS
a sister-queen
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
This novel is part-epistolary (all the letters being in continuation from the Scottish Anna Sidney—who later becomes Lady Kilmorney—to her older friend Mrs Grenville), partly in dialogue, partly in the form of Anna's journal, and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sophia Lee
The Recess was highly influential: in its basic technique of inserting fictive persons among actual historical ones, in its polarization of Elizabeth
and Mary
, and in its heavily sentimental tone. Writers directly influenced by...
