The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

Stranded in a gloomy medieval fortress, an orphaned heroine battles the devious schemes of her guardians as well as her own pensive visions and melancholy fancies. Generations of readers have thrilled to The Mysteries of Udolpho, one of the most popular of the early Gothic novels and a landmark in the realm of psychological fiction.
Set in 1584, the tale unfolds amid the secret chambers of a chateau in southern France and a castle in the remote Apennines, populated by pirates, brigands, ghosts, and specters. Emily St. Aubert, imprisoned by her rapacious guardian and his sadistic wife, struggles to reconcile her father's teachings of reserve and moderation with her own reckless passions. Emily's attempts to control her emotions and resolve her suspicions and self-doubts offer a haunting and hypnotic pre-Freudian exploration of the psyche.
Sir Walter Scott proclaimed author Ann Radcliffe the first poetess of romantic fiction, and this thriller became a bestseller upon its 1794 publication. The novel exercised a powerful influence on the Marquis de Sade, Edgar Allan Poe, and other mystery writers. It achieved further renown with a satirical treatment in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, in which an impressionable young character is profoundly affected by the dungeons and crypts of Castle Udolpho and their scenes of bloodshed, mayhem, and terror. The Mysteries of Udolpho continues to enchant modern readers with the fairy-tale elements of its suspenseful plot and its dreamlike, surrealistic portrayals of human consciousness.

Ann Radcliffe was born in 1764, the daughter of a London tradesman. In 1786 she married William Radcliffe, later the manager of The English Chronicle. She set her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), in Scotland, and it received little critical or public attention. Using more exotic locations in Europe, notably the 'sublime' landscapes of the Alps and Pyrenees, she wrote four more novels within ten years: A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolfo (1794) and The Italian (1797), as well as a volume of descriptions of her travels in Holland, Germany and the Lake District.

The success of The Romance of the Forest established Radcliffe as the leading exponent of the historical Gothic Romance. Her later novels met with even greater attention, and produced many imitators (and, famously, Jane Austen's burlesque of The Romance of the Forest in Northanger Abbey), and influenced the work of Sir Walter Scott and Mary Wollstonecraft.

The Italian was the last book she published in her lifetime; a novel, Gaston de Blondeville, and St. Albans Abbey: A Metrical Tale were published posthumously. Despite the sensational nature of her romances and their enormous success, Radcliffe and her husband lived quietly--she made only one foreign journey and barely glimpsed the Alps that she wrote about so vividly. She died in 1823 from respiratory problems probably caused by pneumonia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780486440330
ISBN 10	0486440338
Title	The Mysteries of Udolpho
Author	Ann Ward Radcliffe
Series	Dover Giant Thrift Editions
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Dover Publications Inc.
Year published	2005-12-31
Number of pages	624
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.