Publisher's Synopsis
Ann Radcliffe (née Ward, 9 July 1764 - 7 February 1823) was an English author and pioneer of the Gothic novel. Her style is Romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural. It was her technique " the explained supernatural," the final revelation of inexplicable phenomena, that helped the Gothic novel achieve respectability in the 1790s. Radcliffe is considered one of the founders of Gothic literature. While there were others that preceded her, Radcliffe was the one that legitimised the genre. Sir Walter Scott called her the "founder of a class or school". Jane Austen parodied Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey. Radcliffe did not like where Gothic literature was headed, and one of her later novels, The Italian, was written in response to Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk. It is assumed that this frustration is what caused Radcliffe to cease writing. After Radcliffe's death, her husband released her unfinished essay "On the Supernatural in Poetry," which details the difference between the sensation of terror her works aimed to achieve and the horror Lewis sought to evoke. She states that terror aims to stimulate readers through imagination and perceived evils while horror closes them off through fear and physical dangers.
