Ann Radcliffe

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Ann Radcliffe (born Ann Ward, 9 July 1764 – 7 February 1823) was an English author and Gothic fiction pioneer.

In the 1790s, her method of describing seemingly supernatural elements in her books has been credited with increasing Gothic fiction admiration.

Radcliffe was both admired and admired by modern scholars; contemporary commentators referred to her as the mighty enchantress and the Shakespeare of romance-writers; her fame continued into the 19th century.

With the publication of paperback reprints and three biographies, enthusiasm has revived in the early 21st century.

Literary life

Radcliffe wrote five novels during her lifetime, which she always referred to as "romances"; Gaston de Blondeville's final book, however, was published posthumously in 1826. G. G. and J. Robinson, her publishers, bought the copyright for The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), making Radcliffe the highest-paid professional writer of the 1790s at a time when the average amount earned by an author for a manuscript was £10. Romance of the Forest (1791) was her first published book.

Ann Radcliffe lived a retired life and had never travelled to the countries where the frightening events in her books took place. Her only voyage outside of Holland and Germany was made in 1794, after the bulk of her books were published. In her book A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 (1795), the journey was chronicled.

In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen parodied The Mysteries of Udolpho. Radcliffe did not like the direction in which Gothic literature was headed when she first published The Italian, one of her later books, in reaction to Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk. Radcliffe portrayed her female characters as equal to male characters, allowing them to rule and overthrowrown male villains and heroes, as well as female protagonists, giving women new roles in literature that were otherwise unobtainable. Her husband wrote "On the Supernatural in Poetry" after Radcliffe's death, which explains the difference between the terror she aimed for and the terror Lewis evoked. Radcliffe said that fear stimulates readers by imagination and imagined evils, while fear and physical dangers discourage them from participating. "Terror and Horror are so different; the first awakens the mind and restores the faculties to a high degree of fitness; the other occupations, freezes, and almost annihilates them."

Radcliffe was unusual in that she was known for including supernatural elements in the first place but then gave readers a reason for the supernatural. Radcliffe would usually have a good reason for what seemed to be supernatural towards the end of her books, which led to increased suspense. Some commentators/readers found it dissatisfaction and felt insulted. "Perhaps the most convincing complaint against the trope was lodged by Walter Scott in his Lives of the Novelists (1821–1824)." "A stealthy step behind the arras may have no influence on the imagination in some situations, and if the nerves are tuned to a particular pitch, the intrigue is gone," Radcliffe writes; but if the emotion is not concerned, the visionary is at once furious about his deception and his motives." Some modern scholars have been dissatisfied with her work, as she struggles to include "true ghosts" in her writings. This could be triggered by the belief that works in the Romantic period, from the late 1800s to the mid-19th century, can mislead Enlightenment values such as rationalism and realism.

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