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
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Hays	MH 's preface explains her intention of examining the power of the passions in action, on the model of Godwin 's Caleb Williams. She also compliments Ann Radcliffe . She defends the worth of...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence	Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson	A minor character in this novel sums up rules of the gothic genre to which it belongs: a castle, a turret, a winding staircase, an assassin, a suicide, a spectre . . . ingredients enough...
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	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, qtd. in Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols. 1: 684 in which detached scenes of...
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	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	Isabella Kelly	This novel was praised by the British Critic as entitled to no mean place among the better productions of this description. qtd. in Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols. The interesting characters, gripping incident, and unaffected language were singled out for praise. qtd. in Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols. Frederick S. Frank
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	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, 2010, p. ix - xxii, xxix-xxxi. x
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. qtd. in Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols. 1: 761 Jane Austen
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, 5 series. 24 (1798): 1-22 Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...
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...

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