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A journey made in the summer of 1794, through Holland and the Western frontier of Germany (1795)
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499 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1795
About the author
Ann Radcliffe
577 books749 followersAnn Ward Radcliffe of Britain wrote Gothic novels, including
The Mysteries of Udolpho
(1794).
This English author pioneered.
William Radcliffe, her father and a haberdasher, moved the family to Bath to manage a china shop in 1772. Radcliffe occasionally lived with her uncle, Thomas Bentley, in Chelsea in partnership with a fellow Unitarian, Josiah Wedgwood. Although mixing in some distinguished circles, Radcliffe seemingly made little impression in this society, and Wedgwood described her as "Bentley's shy niece."
In 1787, she married William Radcliffe, the Oxford graduate and journalist. He often came home late, and to occupy her time, she began to write and read her work when he returned. They enjoyed a childless but seemingly happy marriage. Radcliffe called him her "nearest relative and friend". The money she earned from her novels later allowed them to travel together, along with their dog, Chance.
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 (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and The Italian (1796). She published a travelogue, A Journey Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany in 1795.
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 Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey, as well as influencing the works of Sir Walter Scott.
Stylistically, Radcliffe was noted for her vivid descriptions of exotic and sinister locales, though in reality the author had rarely or never visited the actual locations. Shy by nature, she did not encourage her fame and abandoned literature as a pursuit.
She died on February 7, 1823 and was buried in Saint George's Church, Hanover Square, London.
This English author pioneered.
William Radcliffe, her father and a haberdasher, moved the family to Bath to manage a china shop in 1772. Radcliffe occasionally lived with her uncle, Thomas Bentley, in Chelsea in partnership with a fellow Unitarian, Josiah Wedgwood. Although mixing in some distinguished circles, Radcliffe seemingly made little impression in this society, and Wedgwood described her as "Bentley's shy niece."
In 1787, she married William Radcliffe, the Oxford graduate and journalist. He often came home late, and to occupy her time, she began to write and read her work when he returned. They enjoyed a childless but seemingly happy marriage. Radcliffe called him her "nearest relative and friend". The money she earned from her novels later allowed them to travel together, along with their dog, Chance.
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 (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and The Italian (1796). She published a travelogue, A Journey Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany in 1795.
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 Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey, as well as influencing the works of Sir Walter Scott.
Stylistically, Radcliffe was noted for her vivid descriptions of exotic and sinister locales, though in reality the author had rarely or never visited the actual locations. Shy by nature, she did not encourage her fame and abandoned literature as a pursuit.
She died on February 7, 1823 and was buried in Saint George's Church, Hanover Square, London.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 24, 2025
Unfortunately the author of famous Gothic novels and hilariously and affectionately satirised by Austen in Northanger Abbey here reveals herself to be a little Englander with an anti-German attitude that I (a German) find hard to laud (especially after Brexit and the realisation that many of these attitudes to 'furrangers' persist).
To be fair, Radcliffe did undertake what in 1794 was a much more hazardous journey than it is today: across the Channel, through the Netherlands, down the Rhine to the Swiss border (where her party was turned away) and back up the (then much more treacherous) Rhine. And yes, I can believe that the inns, roads and conveyances she encountered along the way were often dirty, rough and unpredictable, and that many inn keepers were surly and impolite.
Still, Mme de Staël in her extraordinary De l'Allemagne, tome 1, describing journeys made at roughly the same time, no doubt endured the exact same trials and tribulations, and yet manages to be nuanced and to probe more deeply into the culture that she encountered, beyond a superficial look at the dirty roads.
Radcliffe also chose to travel at a time when much of the area she traverses is still torn by war or post-war trauma. She does not, however, reflect on how the experience of having your town burnt down and billets and taxes forced on you might impact your ability to be uniformly cheerful to passing English tourists. Instead, she laments that her passage is at times impeded by soldiers marching past or troops taking up available lodgings.
Also, Radcliffe displays an arrogant belief in her own class superiority to peasants and other commoners all of whom she regards as mere servants to her own convenience. If they walk about the countryside looking prosperous and picturesque in their rural costumes, then yay. But should they display the insolence of looking impoverished or of not displaying the appropriate humility and consciousness of their own inferiority: woe to them. All of this written in the wake of a republican questioning of these very values of hereditary superiority.
Radcliffe is at her best when she describes sublime riverscapes and weather formations. These are also aspects she deploys to great effect in her novels; a pity she cannot be more charitable to the country that furnishes the sights of cliffs, ruins and castles.
And her times are intrinsically interesting. There are details that are now of historical interest that she takes for granted (how people crossed rivers when there was no bridge; the various currencies; the operation of city gates) and aspects particular to 1794: the revolutionary wars fought in the Rhine area.
She does attempt to describe battles. Unfortunately, those are the most tedious parts of the book and at times they go on and on and on for pages and pages and pages. These are based on pamphlets and documents she purchased while in Germany, and their second-hand dryness is not enlivened by any of her own imaginative or intellectual input. So that even battles are boring. Much is described of Mainz (called Mentz) but nothing of the (to me very intriguing) existence of the Mainz Republic - short-lived but the first republic on German soil.
It is also interesting how many of the ruins she encounters are not due to the wars of the 1790s but to earlier wars, the Seven-year-War and the Thirty Years War and the War of Succession. These were much more present to someone in 1794; to us today they do seem very remote.
Her novels are inhabited by a fascination with Catholicism (nuns, monks, monasteries) but her attitude to actual Catholicism is dismissive, and ultimately, Catholicism serves to fuel her stories of terror, ghosts and superstition. There is little love of actual Catholicism -- found in many of the places she visists -- nor understanding of how the various faiths in Germany underpin politics and cultures.
What redeems it all for me is her description of places I am very familiar with, especially the city of Mannheim. I enjoyed very much reading about Manmheim, Karlsruhe, Schwetzingen and the Bergstrasse.
By contrast with Germany, she adores the Netherlands -- Protestant, neat, tidy, efficient, cheap and polite.
But ultimately, I don't like this: "little individual prosperity in Germany, little diffusion of intelligence, manners, or even of the means for comfort, few sources of independence, or honourable wealth, and no examples of the poverty , in which there may be pride". Where to start? She is maybe thinking of British proto-capitalism, based on imperial trade, and she no doubt is thinking of feudal 'comforts' and aristocratic 'wealth'. The proud poverty no doubt derives from her encounter with poor people who are polite and deferential to her. Well, so sorry, poor people who don't feel 'pride' in their poverty!
But the Dutch: 'The lower classes of the Dutch ... are not only without the malignant sullenness of the Germans, and therefore, ready to return you service for money, but are also so much superior to them in intelligence and docility."
And there's the crux: the "lower classes" must be "docile". And the German ones don't seem sufficiently "docile" to Radcliffe's addled eyes. And as they are neither "docile" nor "proud', the poor people must therefore be "malignant" and "sullen".
When I read de Staël's book on Germany, I was impressed with that author's much more open and intellectually curious stance. De Staël starts out sceptical of much she finds in Germany but she is prepared to change her mind, to see nuance, and she ends up being a total fan of German literature and philosophy -- things of which Radcliffe appears to know nothing -- surprising, given her own profession of authoress.
Some final thoughts: English roads were doubtless (as Radcliffe describes; there seems no reason to suspect her words here) superior to German ones, and carriages travelled along them at greater speed. However, Radcliffe also describes (which I hadn't known of) the monopoly of the Thurn und Taxis aristocratic family on post-chaises, a mail system that was so well ordered that nobody need fear highway robbers. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.
To be fair, Radcliffe did undertake what in 1794 was a much more hazardous journey than it is today: across the Channel, through the Netherlands, down the Rhine to the Swiss border (where her party was turned away) and back up the (then much more treacherous) Rhine. And yes, I can believe that the inns, roads and conveyances she encountered along the way were often dirty, rough and unpredictable, and that many inn keepers were surly and impolite.
Still, Mme de Staël in her extraordinary De l'Allemagne, tome 1, describing journeys made at roughly the same time, no doubt endured the exact same trials and tribulations, and yet manages to be nuanced and to probe more deeply into the culture that she encountered, beyond a superficial look at the dirty roads.
Radcliffe also chose to travel at a time when much of the area she traverses is still torn by war or post-war trauma. She does not, however, reflect on how the experience of having your town burnt down and billets and taxes forced on you might impact your ability to be uniformly cheerful to passing English tourists. Instead, she laments that her passage is at times impeded by soldiers marching past or troops taking up available lodgings.
Also, Radcliffe displays an arrogant belief in her own class superiority to peasants and other commoners all of whom she regards as mere servants to her own convenience. If they walk about the countryside looking prosperous and picturesque in their rural costumes, then yay. But should they display the insolence of looking impoverished or of not displaying the appropriate humility and consciousness of their own inferiority: woe to them. All of this written in the wake of a republican questioning of these very values of hereditary superiority.
Radcliffe is at her best when she describes sublime riverscapes and weather formations. These are also aspects she deploys to great effect in her novels; a pity she cannot be more charitable to the country that furnishes the sights of cliffs, ruins and castles.
And her times are intrinsically interesting. There are details that are now of historical interest that she takes for granted (how people crossed rivers when there was no bridge; the various currencies; the operation of city gates) and aspects particular to 1794: the revolutionary wars fought in the Rhine area.
She does attempt to describe battles. Unfortunately, those are the most tedious parts of the book and at times they go on and on and on for pages and pages and pages. These are based on pamphlets and documents she purchased while in Germany, and their second-hand dryness is not enlivened by any of her own imaginative or intellectual input. So that even battles are boring. Much is described of Mainz (called Mentz) but nothing of the (to me very intriguing) existence of the Mainz Republic - short-lived but the first republic on German soil.
It is also interesting how many of the ruins she encounters are not due to the wars of the 1790s but to earlier wars, the Seven-year-War and the Thirty Years War and the War of Succession. These were much more present to someone in 1794; to us today they do seem very remote.
Her novels are inhabited by a fascination with Catholicism (nuns, monks, monasteries) but her attitude to actual Catholicism is dismissive, and ultimately, Catholicism serves to fuel her stories of terror, ghosts and superstition. There is little love of actual Catholicism -- found in many of the places she visists -- nor understanding of how the various faiths in Germany underpin politics and cultures.
What redeems it all for me is her description of places I am very familiar with, especially the city of Mannheim. I enjoyed very much reading about Manmheim, Karlsruhe, Schwetzingen and the Bergstrasse.
By contrast with Germany, she adores the Netherlands -- Protestant, neat, tidy, efficient, cheap and polite.
But ultimately, I don't like this: "little individual prosperity in Germany, little diffusion of intelligence, manners, or even of the means for comfort, few sources of independence, or honourable wealth, and no examples of the poverty , in which there may be pride". Where to start? She is maybe thinking of British proto-capitalism, based on imperial trade, and she no doubt is thinking of feudal 'comforts' and aristocratic 'wealth'. The proud poverty no doubt derives from her encounter with poor people who are polite and deferential to her. Well, so sorry, poor people who don't feel 'pride' in their poverty!
But the Dutch: 'The lower classes of the Dutch ... are not only without the malignant sullenness of the Germans, and therefore, ready to return you service for money, but are also so much superior to them in intelligence and docility."
And there's the crux: the "lower classes" must be "docile". And the German ones don't seem sufficiently "docile" to Radcliffe's addled eyes. And as they are neither "docile" nor "proud', the poor people must therefore be "malignant" and "sullen".
When I read de Staël's book on Germany, I was impressed with that author's much more open and intellectually curious stance. De Staël starts out sceptical of much she finds in Germany but she is prepared to change her mind, to see nuance, and she ends up being a total fan of German literature and philosophy -- things of which Radcliffe appears to know nothing -- surprising, given her own profession of authoress.
Some final thoughts: English roads were doubtless (as Radcliffe describes; there seems no reason to suspect her words here) superior to German ones, and carriages travelled along them at greater speed. However, Radcliffe also describes (which I hadn't known of) the monopoly of the Thurn und Taxis aristocratic family on post-chaises, a mail system that was so well ordered that nobody need fear highway robbers. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.
Displaying 1 of 1 review