Ann Radcliffe





Ann Radcliffe

Author profile


born
in Holborn, England, The United Kingdom
July 09, 1764

died
February 07, 1823

genre


About this author

Ann Radcliffe was an English author, a pioneer of the gothic novel.

Radcliffe was born Ann Ward in Holborn. At the age of 22, she married journalist William Radcliffe, owner and editor of the English Chronicle, in Bath in 1788. The couple was childless and, to amuse herself, she began to write fiction, which her husband encouraged.

She published The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne in 1789. It set the tone for the majority of her work, which tended to involve innocent, but heroic young women who find themselves in gloomy, mysterious castles ruled by even more mysterious barons with dark pasts.

Her works were extremely popular among the upper class and the growing middle class, especially among young women. Her works included A Sicilian Romance (...more


Average rating: 3.36 · 7,624 ratings · 684 reviews · 38 distinct works · Similar authors
The Mysteries of Udolpho
3.33 of 5 stars 3.33 avg rating — 4,773 ratings — published 1794 — 85 editions
The Italian
by
3.44 of 5 stars 3.44 avg rating — 1,391 ratings — published 1797 — 45 editions
The Romance of the Forest
3.45 of 5 stars 3.45 avg rating — 620 ratings — published 1791 — 24 editions
A Sicilian Romance
3.23 of 5 stars 3.23 avg rating — 552 ratings — published 1790 — 37 editions
Graphic Classics Volume 14:...
by
3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 avg rating — 82 ratings — published 2007
The Castles of Athlin and D...
3.27 of 5 stars 3.27 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 1789 — 17 editions
Two Gothic Classics by Wome...
by
4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1995
The Veiled Picture; Or, the...
3.13 of 5 stars 3.13 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2006
Gaston de Blondeville
3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 2006 — 9 editions
The Mysteries of Udolpho an...
4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions
More books by Ann Radcliffe…
“I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection. Yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that i always feel revived, as by a new convinction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; and wanting these, I relapse into doubt and often into despondency.”
Ann Radcliffe

“Such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest.”
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

“A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.”
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

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