GOTHIC FICTION

Introduction

by Peter Otto

6 - Radcliffe and her imitators

“There is a fascination in her 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' which those who feel in youth will likely remember in old age: but it is not the fascination of pleasure; it resembles that practised by the adder, when it sucks, as rustic naturalists say, the lark from the sky – we shudder and become victims. The earth, as we read, seems a churchyard – the houses become castles of gloom – the streams run as if with blood – the last note of the blackbird seems that of the last trumpet – "disasters veil the moon" – and Ann Radcliffe and her mysteries triumph.”
Alan Cunningham

The life of Ann Radcliffe, "the great enchantress", "the first poetess of romantic fiction" and the most important writer of Gothic fictions, spans the period during which the genre (or, more accurately, its first incarnation) waxed and then waned. Born on 9 July 1764, the year in which Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, she died on 9 January 1823, when Gothic fiction was thought to be itself a thing of the past. Radcliffe was the only child of William and Ann Oates Ward who, her first biographer (presumed to be Thomas Noon Talfourd) is careful to say, "though engaged in trade were allied to families of independent fortune and high character". One of the most significant of these relatives was Thomas Bentley, of the firm Wedgwood and Bentley, a frequent visitor at the Ward's house and with whom the young Ann Radcliffe stayed for long periods. A founder of the Presbyterian Academy at Warrington and the Dissenter's Octagon Chapel, Bentley was friends with Joseph Priestley, Sir Joseph Banks and Benjamin Franklin.

On the 15th January 1787, Ann Ward married William Radcliffe, a graduate of Oxford and (probably) rejected Law student, who became a translator, journalist and in 1791 the proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle. After her marriage, and with William's encouragement, Radcliffe "soon began to employ her leisure in writing", publishing five novels and a volume of travel writing in less than ten years: The castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. A Highland story (London: T. Hookham, 1789); A Sicilian romance (London: T. Hookham, 1790); The romance of the forest (London: T. Hookham and J. Carpenter, 1791); The mysteries of Udolpho, a romance (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1794); A journey made in the summer of 1794, through Holland and the western frontier of Germany (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1795); and The Italian; or, The confessional of the black penitents (London: T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies, 1797).

Although Radcliffe's first novel was barely noticed by the critics, her third was so popular that she received the sum of £500 for her fourth, The Mysteries of Udolpho. "[T]his sum was double her husband's annual income as a newspaper proprietor, and astonishing when compared to the £10 or £20 paid to authors of three-volume Minerva novels". Talfourd writes that the publisher, "Mr. Cadell, who had great experience in such matters", on being told that Mrs Radcliffe had signed a contract for this sum, "offered a wager of £10" that his informant had been misled. Ironically, Mr Cadell's publishing company offered Radcliffe £800 for her next novel, The Italian.

As Rogers writes, although The Romance of the Forest "established Radcliffe's reputation ... it was Udolpho that catapulted her to fame".

Hookam and Carpenter produced a second edition of The Romance of the Forest in the year it was released, and further editions were published in 1792, 1794, 1796 and 1799. Second and third editions of Udolpho appeared in London in 1794 and 1795, sales of the novel being helped by James Boaden's enormously popular Fontainville Forest (London: Hookham and Carpenter, 1794), an adaptation of The Romance of the Forest, which opened at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden, on the 25 March 1794. Dublin editions of Udolpho appeared in 1794 and 1795. Before the turn of the century, French (1797, 1798) and German (1795, 1798) translations had also been published.

The Mysteries of Udolpho inspired a crowd of Radcliffe imitators. In some instances, this took the form of plagiarism or at least extensive borrowing. In John Mitchell's The spectre mother, or The haunted tower (London: Dean & Munday, [n.d.]), for example, the villain of Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, Montoni, is barely disguised as the detestable Moresco. The author of The mysteries of Udolpho, a romance, founded on facts; comprising the adventures & misfortunes of Emily St. Aubert (London: W. Mason, [n.d.]) was able to condense the four volumes and 1,797 pages of Radcliffe's novel to the point where s/he could include, within the 36 pages allotted to this chapbook, a second tale, Adolphus and Louisa, or The fatal attachment, a tale of truth.

Although not the work of (simple) plagiarists, the titles of texts such as Faulconstein Forest (London: Hookham, Junior, and E. T. Hookham, 1810) and The avenger; or, The Sicilian vespers (London: J. J. Stockdale, 1810) advertise their indebtedness to specific works by Radcliffe, no doubt in the hope of drawing an audience hoping to enjoy once again the thrills of, respectively, The Romance of the Forest and A Sicilian romance.

Of course, many of Radcliffe's followers and/or competitors had a complex relation with their "strong precursor". Of the host of writers who imitated and/or revised Radcliffe's work, perhaps the most significant are Isaac Crookenden, Catherine Cuthbertson, Mrs Isaacs, Mary Meeke, Mary Ann Radcliffe (her Manfronè; or, The one-handed monk. A romance (London: J. F. Hughes, 1809) was frequently attributed to Ann Radcliffe), Regina Maria Roche and Eleanor Sleath. Relations with the founder of their school were not always equanimous. In the introduction to his Ancient records, or, The abbey of Saint Oswythe (London: Minerva, 1801), T. J. Horsley Curties readily admits that the book's “mysteries - its terrific illusions - its very errors must be attributed to a love of Romance, caught from an enthusiastic admiration of Udolpho’s unrivalled Foundress. He follows her through all the venerable gloom of horrors, not as a kindred spirit, but contented, as a shadow, in attending her footsteps.”

Nevertheless he goes on to argue that, despite Radcliffe's pre-eminence, the field should now be left to men:

“Ought the female Novelist, in order to display a complete knowledge of human nature, to degrade that delicate timidity, that shrinking innocence which is the loveliest boast of womanhood in drawing characters which would ruin her reputation to be acquainted with? – Ought she to describe scenes which bashful modesty would blush to conceive an idea, much less avow a knowledge of? – Oh no! let the chaste pen of female delicacy disdain such unworthy subjects; - leave to the other sex a description of grovelling incidents, debased characters, and low pursuits: - there is still a range wide and vast enough for fanciful imagination; but when female invention will employ itself in images of the grosser sort, it is a fatal prediction of relaxed morals, and a species of – at least – LITERARY PROSTITUTION.”

As McIntyre dryly remarks, "a lady of any literary conscience might well have a sense of guilt at being responsible for such a following".

Radcliffe was so retiring, and so few of her letters and diaries are extant, that it remains unclear why, after the publication of The Italian, at the height of her fame, she published no further novels. (Although in 1802, inspired by a visit to Kenilworth Castle, she worked on a sixth novel, Gaston de Blondeville, or, The court of Henry III (London: Henry Colburn, 1826), it was not published until after her death.) Her withdrawal from public notice was so complete that many of her contemporaries believed she had died or gone mad. Her name does not appear in A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland (1816). Sir Walter Scott admitted that, like many others, he believed "that, in consequence of brooding over the terrors which she depicted, her reason had at length been overturned, and that the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho only existed as the melancholy inmate of a private mad-house".

Talfourd advances a number of possible explanations for Radcliffe's "retirement": she felt unable "to surpass her "Mysteries of Udolpho" and her "Italian"; she was unwilling "again to subject herself to criticism by publication"; having begun to write for pecuniary advantage, she stopped when it was no longer necessary. Others have suggested that the true cause lies in her ill-health (she suffered from asthma), the melancholy caused by the death of her parents, or the popular association of the Gothic with the French revolution. Although we may never be able satisfactorily to explain why, after 1796 Radcliffe left Gothic fictions to her imitators, competitors and opponents.

7 - Lewis and her Followers

8 - Terror and Horror Gothic

9 - Gothic Echoes / Gothic Labyrinths

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