GOTHIC FICTION:
Rare Printed Works from the Sadleir-Black Collection of Gothic Fiction at the Alderman Library, University of Virginia

Part 1: Matthew Lewis and Gothic Horror - Beckford to Lewis
Part 2: Matthew Lewis and Gothic Horror - MacKenzie to Zschokke
Part 3: Gothic Terror: Radcliffe and her Imitators - Boaden to Meeke
Part 4: Gothic Terror: Radcliffe and her Imitators - Pickard to Wilkinson
Part 5: Domestic and Sentimental Gothic - Bennett to Lamb
Part 6: Domestic and Sentimental Gothic - Lathom to Warner

BIOGRAPHIES OF GOTHIC NOVELISTS

Aikin: see Barbauld

Father Anselmo, novelist, the identity and sex of the real author, who is using a pseudonym, is not known. Theodore and Clementina; or, Crusades against the infidels of Palestine: (1825) is translated from the French of Anselmo. It is a thirty six page chapbook printed by Hodgson and co., which contains an account of the captivity of the crusader Theodore, and his escape from the Holy Land. While he is away, a neighbouring baron courts his wife. Theodore returns home just in time to stop the wedding.

Jane Austen, (1775-1817), the daughter of the Rev. George Austen is one of the most celebrated English novelists with novels such as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816). Amongst her juvenilia is Lesley Castle apparently written in 1792 when Austen was sixteen, which subverts Gothic expectations. This epistolary novella was a prelude to the Gothic parody Northanger Abbey, which gently mocks the vogue for “horrid” reading and is one of her two novels published posthumously in 1818 and set in Bath. The other is Persuasion, which was written towards the end of her life probably while she was suffering from Addison’s disease, which eventually led to her death.

Anna Letitia (Aikin) Barbauld, (1743-1825), poet, essayist, and educationalist was a leading Blue Stocking, being part of a circle of radical dissenters which included Hannah More and Elizabeth Montague. With her brother John, she theorised the Gothic in “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror” (1773), which was appended to a tale of terror she wrote called Sir Bertrand: A Fragment where the theory is put into practice. Her hero’s nightmare journey to a castle involves him touching a cadaverous hand and following blue flames to a secret chamber where a shrouded lady lying in a sarcophagus gives him a chilling kiss. In 1808, Barbauld’s husband, who she had married in 1774, went insane and committed suicide.

C. F. Barrett, novelist, wrote Gothic chapbooks, which are abridged or plagiarised novels with spectacular and supernatural effects. Douglas Castle: or The Cell of Mystery (1803) is based on Clara Reeve’s [q.v.] Old English Baron. It is set in Medieval Scotland and concerns the wicked Baron Douglas, who imprisons his victims in an iron tower. The Round Tower, or The Mysterious Witness (1803) purports to be an Irish legendary tale from the sixth century. The plot and atmosphere is derivative of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The vengeful wife of the Danish usurper, Sitric, is a Gaelic version of Lady Macbeth. A baby smeared in blood and draped in chains is an additional gory feature.

Eaton Stannard Barrett, novelist, with a taste for satire and parody, authored a number of novels and poems. In 1807, he wrote a satirical poem All the Talents using dialogues and The Rising Sun, subtitled a “serio-comic satiric romance”. The Heroine: or, The Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader (1813) is a Gothic parody starring Cherry Wilkinson who recasts herself as Cherubina and leaves her father for a potentially villainous aristocratic surrogate. The aptly named Monckton Castle is the chosen theatre for the enactment of her Gothic melodramas. It is suitably redecorated even having the flags stained with the “best old blood, feudal if possible”. The moral of the tale is to draw attention to the folly of the Gothic reading epidemic.

George Barrington, novelist, wrote the lurid Gothic chapbook and monastic shocker, Eliza, or The Unhappy Nun (1803). It is subdivided into four tales: “A Remarkable Suicide”, “Suicide through Oppression”, “Suicide through Distress: Henri de Francoeur”, and “The Suicide of William L.” The third tale tells of Eliza, who is forced into a convent by her father. It is there that she is punished for an illicit love-affair by the cruel lesbian abbess, who confines her to a punishment cell containing the bones of erring nuns. The prequel to the tale concerns Clementina whose love, Jeromina, is so grief-stricken at her funeral that he falls on top of her passing coffin from a window and dies from his injuries.

William Beckford (1760-1844), novelist, at the age of ten inherited Fonthill Splendens, a 5,000 acre Wiltshire estate, and a huge fortune from his family’s Jamaican sugar plantation. A pederasty scandal forced him and his wife into temporary exile on the Continent. In his private Journal (first pub. 1954), Beckford recorded his sexual infatuation with young men. Exotica, decadence and Orientalism saturate his most famous work, the Arabian tale of Vathek (1786). The cruel sensualist Caliph Vathek, whose glance can kill, sacrifices fifty children and is punished when his heart bursts into flames. With his Swiss dwarf Perro, Beckford retreated to Fonthill in 1796 to erect edifices to Gothic folly. He was buried in a pink granite tomb below the Lansdown Tower he built, overlooking Bath.

Agnes Maria Bennett (d. 1808), novelist, had numerous children and wrote lengthy novels, some of which ran to 7 volumes. In 1794, Minerva Press published Ellen, Countess of Castle Howel with an “Apology” referring to the author’s troubled circumstances. By 1806, when Bennett was at the height of her popularity, she published the 6 volume Vicissitudes abroad, or the Ghost of my Father, which sold 2,000 copies on the first day of publication despite costing the princely sum of 36 shillings. This titanic text surely represents the vicissitudes of the long Gothic novel, by showing “the Gothic spirit sinking” under the weight of 2,026 pages “into the quagmire of its own verbiage” and Mrs Bennett’s “sodden” prose. (Frederick L. Frank, The First Gothics, 1987, p. 28)

James Boaden (1762-1839), novelist and journalist was appointed editor of the Oracle newspaper in 1789, which had been set up that year to rival the World. In 1793, Boaden started writing plays. His Fontainville Forest (1794) which was received at Covent Garden with much applause was based on Radcliffe’s [q.v.] Romance of the Forest while his Italian Monk (1797) was derivative of her The Italian. In 1803, he wrote Voice of Nature and Maid of Bristol. In later life, he produced biographies of well-known actors such as the Life of Mrs Siddons (1827) and Life of Mrs Jordan (1831). He died leaving nine children amongst whom was a daughter who also wrote plays.

C.A. Bolen, novelist, was the author of The Mysterious Monk; or, The Wizard’s Tower (1826) and Walter the Murderer; or, The Mysteries of El Dorado (1827). Bolen was influenced by the novels of Ann Radcliffe and Walter Scott. His first novel, taking place at the time of King John, is a typical romance. The Holy Inquisition put in an appearance and charges of witchcraft are invoked. The novel ends on a melodramatic note of the Countess Pembroke who, after having drugged and imprisoned her husband, plunges a dagger in her bosom as she is so overwhelmed by her passion for Adolphe. Walter the Murderer is a more restrained narrative set during the reign of Henry VII, which has more credibility than its histrionic predecessor.

Elizabeth Bonhote (1744-1818), novelist whose father was a tradesman, married Daniel Bonhote, a local solicitor and clerk sometime between 1770-1774. Her earliest works were elegies and she went on to produce poems on conservative subjects and a conduct book for children called The Parental Monitor (1788). She became a best-selling Minerva Press author and wrote The Rambles of Mr Frankly, published by his sister (1772-1773), The Fashionable Friend (1776), Hortensia; or The Distressed Wife (1777), Olivia; or the Deserted Bride (1778) and Bungay Castle (1796). Bonhote lived and worked in Bungay castle until around 1800, when she sold it to Charles, Duke of Norfolk to whom she dedicated her novel. She died in the town of Bungay at the age of 74.

George Brewer (b. 1766), miscellaneous writer who first came to public attention with a comedy called How to be Happy that was performed at the Haymarket Theatre in August 1794. But “owing to the shaft of malevolence” the comedy was cancelled and never went into print. It could have contributed to Brewer’s view of himself as being luckless with vicissitude as his tutor, having been “misplaced or displaced in life”. In 1800, Brewer published a pamphlet “The Rights of the Poor”, &c dedicated it to “Men who have great power, by one without any”. In 1808, he published his two volume Gothic novel, The Witch of Ravensworth. The central hag is notorious for eating babies and arranges for the Baron le Braunch to stab a loathsome corpse.

Eliza Bromley (fl. 1784-1803), novelist, was the widow of a military officer. The first of her two novels is Laura and Augustus: An Authentic Story; In a Series of Letters (1784) which starts with a young girl writing to her friend about her visits to far-away places including Antigua, Madeira and Madras. A series of letters from her lover to his friend document a descent into disaster and death. Her next novel, The Cave of Cosenza: A Romance of the Eighteenth Century, altered from the Italian (1803), relates how a married man is seduced by an Italian woman, who he met in Italy. Bromley uses this as an opportunity to criticise Italian culture, customs and morality.

A. Brown, novelist, may be a pseudonym for a writer of whom very little is known other than that he or she wrote the Gothic chapbook entitled Alpine Wanderers: or The Vindictive Relative, a story that was allegedly derived from fact, which was printed for J. Scale. The date of publication has been disputed and swings between 1800 and 1820. The text has also been published under its subtitle The Vindictive Relative.

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), novelist, was a pioneer of American Gothic, whose reputation rests on Wieland: or The Transformation (1798), Ormond: or The Secret Witness (1799), Edgar Huntley: or, The Memoirs of a Sleepwalker (1799) and Arthur Mervyn: or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 (1799, 1800). Brown intellectualises the Gothic and demonstrates in Edgar Huntley, for instance, the dialectical exchange of good and evil though the inter-changeability of hero and villain. In the preface, he sets out to move beyond “puerile superstition and exploded manners, Gothic castles and chimeras”. Yet he does not flinch entirely from such Gothic effects as sleep-walking and ventriloquism and even kills off the hero’s father in Wieland through spontaneous combustion.

Elizabeth Cullen Brown, novelist, was the daughter of a celebrated man who did not provide for her. She turned to writing two didactic, flowery-written romances. In the apologetic preface to The Sisters of St Gothard, A Tale (1819) published by Minerva Press, she claims to be unqualified and without genius but wants to help women cultivate reason. The plot tells of cottage-dwelling Swiss Blanchard and his daughters, Adelaide, who is blonde and good and Rosette, brunette and adventurous who leaves her flock and little lamb to follow a soldier’s tune and is predictably beset by seducers. A similar novel, not so well written, is Passion and Reason, or The Modern Brothers (1832). By then, Brown was in “hopeless poverty, sickness and sorrow wishing for death”.

Mrs Anne Burke (fl.1780-1805), novelist, was the author of at least four popular novels beginning with Ela: or, Delusions of the Heart: A Tale, Founded on Fact (1787), first serialised in Columbian Magazine. It is a romantic epistolary novel warning of the dangers of being engaged to a dashing military man, who is secretly betrothed to another. The Secrets of the Cavern (1805) concerns a place of confinement guarded by the ghost of the heroine’s mother. In Emilia de St Aubigne (1788), after storms and ship-wrecks in every sense, the virtuous heroine dies a lingering death. Burke’s relish in the suffering heroine is evident in The Sorrows of Edith: or The Hermitage of the Cliffs (1796) where she commits suicide.

Frederick Chamberlain, novelist, of whom hardly anything is known, produced Lucretia or The Robbers of the Hyrcanean Forest (n.d.). This Gothic chapbook is an example of the Räuberromantik. The robbers’ castle contains a locked chamber of one thousand horrors, which consist of an ossuary of the skeletons of twenty females. These are the trophies of Rufanus who is based on Bluebeard. He is in pursuit of the heroine Lucretia, who frequently faints and swoons as she is assailed by dozens of banditti some of whom are her own relatives in disguise. She may well have joined the macabre exhibit in the secret room had it not been for the intervention of a gallant soldier whom she eventually marries.

Mary Charlton, (fl. 1794-1824) novelist and translator, wrote at least ten novels most of which were published by the Minerva Press. Her Andronica: or, the Fugitive Bride (1797) became a best-seller, helping her to earn sixth place on William Lane’s list of “particular and favourite authors” in 1798. In the same year, she published the well-received Phedora: or, the Forest of Minski, set in Poland. A greater triumph was the Gothic parody, Rosella: Or, Modern Occurrences (1799) where the would-be heroine sets out to fabricate Gothic distress at every turn. Of greater distress to the reader is the disappointing The Homicide (1805). The Life, Adventures, and Vicissitudes of Mary Charlton, the Welch Orphan (1817), is likely to be a fake ‘biography’.

John Corry (fl. 1825) miscellaneous writer and topographer, became a journalist in Dublin. He moved to London in 1792 where he edited a periodical and biographies of George Washington (1800), William Cowper (1803) and Joseph Priestley (1804) and other books including Quack Doctors Dissected in 1810. Corry also wrote histories of various places including Liverpool (1810), Bristol (1816) and Macclesfield (1817). His two volume History of Lancashire was dedicated to George IV and dated 22 Sept 1825. After that nothing is known of Corry’s personal life. His novels include Sebastian and Zeila and The Suicide: or the Progress of Error, which may have been written in 1805, and The Mysterious Gentleman Farmer, 3 vols (1808).

Hannah Parkhouse Cowley (1743-1809), dramatist who, after seeing a disappointing play, declared that she could have written one better herself. In less than two weeks, she wrote The Runaway (1776) which became a runaway success. It was produced by David Garrick at Drury Lane Theatre and gave Sarah Siddons her stage debut. Cowley went on to write another dozen plays. Under the name of Anna Matilda, she published The Italian Marauders, A Romance in 1810. It contains scenes of poetic terror that are derivative of Ann Radcliffe [q.v.]. Set in Venice, the heroine Angela di Mongalfi’s nightmare turns into the reality of being abducted by a band of Italian marauders while she is travelling to the chateau of an uncle she has never met.

Isaac Crookenden, (fl. 1790-1820), churned out chapbooks which endlessly retold the same gory tale packaged as shilling shockers which were invariably plagiarised or abridged versions of Gothic novels. The Skeleton (1805) seems to have been so carelessly or hastily written that Crookenden mistakenly marries off a character who had been murdered in an earlier scene. Fatal Secrets (1806) and Horrible Revenge: or, The Monster of Italy!! (1808) contain sensational revelations of incest. In The Mysterious Murder (1806) the theme continues when the heroine nearly marries her own father. The focus of Story of Morella de Alto (1804) departs from the incest leitmotif to document the criminal and concupiscent career of Scorpino, who is finally executed by the Inquisition for his sexual crimes.

Stephen Cullen, novelist, whose life is shrouded in obscurity, wrote The Haunted Priory: or The Fortunes of the House of Rayo (1794) in the high Gothic mode. The hero, Alfonso, is a version of the knight errant whose heroic quest set in Castile involves penetrating the haunted priory of Rayo. For part of the trek, he is guided by a mysterious cowled figure, who is as gargantuan as he is silent. In the denouement, he is reunited with the Baron de Rayo, whom he had left at the start of his journey, who turns out to be his father. The Castle of Inchvally: A Tale alas! Too true (1796) builds its suspense around the gothic decibels of the demonic laugh, which would achieve greater resonance in Jane Eyre.

T. J. Horsley Curties, (fl. 1799-1807) novelist, of whom Montague Summers wrote “there is no author more Gothic, more romantic than he” (Gothic Quest, p. 333). In Ethelwina: or The House of Fitz-Auburne (1799) and Ancient Records: or, The Abbey of St Oswythe (1801), Curties reveals himself to be a faithful follower of Ann Radcliffe though in The Monk of Udolpho (1807), his flamboyance and exaggeration is closer to that of Mathew “Monk” Lewis [q.v.]. The monk is a copy of Radcliffe’s Schedoni whose history is “one endless tissue of crime”. A year earlier, Curties wrote St Botolph’s Priory: or The Sable Mask which concerns the machinations surrounding a proposed incestuous marriage amid the political intrigues involving Charles I and Oliver Cromwell.

Catherine Cuthbertson, (fl.1810-1830) novelist, had seven novels published starting with Forest of Montalbano (1810). Romance of the Pyrenees (1812), which was wrongly attributed to Ann Radcliffe, was translated into French. After a warehouse fire burnt most copies of the novel, for economic reasons it was serialized in the Lady’s Magazine starting in February 1804. It proved to be one of the longest ever novels to be issued in an eighteenth-century periodical as it had not been intended for serial publication. Santo Sebastiano: or, The Young Protector (1814) degenerates into a moral abyss from which the young Julia de Clifford escapes after encountering the lesbian Lady Delamore, who tortures animals and bullies servants, and Mrs St. Clair, the madam of a bordello.

Charlotte Dacre (c.1772-1825) novelist and poet, wrote verse using the pseudonym ‘Rosa Matilda’ for The Morning Post whose editor Nicholas Byrne fathered three of her children. She published Confessions of the Nun of St Omer (1805), The Libertine (1807) and The Passions (1811). Her Zofloya or The Moor (1806) prompted a reviewer for the Literary Journal to conclude that she had been “afflicted with the dismal malady of maggots in the brain”. The heroine, Victoria murders her husband by slow poison and, after dragging her female rival by the hair, hurls her down a precipice. Finally, she is murdered by her lover, the moor, Zofloya, who turns out to be Satan. Intriguingly, Dacre’s husband was murdered after her death by a mysterious figure in a black crepe mask.

Selena Davenport (1779-1859), novelist, married Richard Davenport in 1800 and separated after ten years. He claimed to have been swindled and financially ruined by his wife and her father and so resorted to laudanum for consolation. Villainy was also a preoccupation of Davenport’s fiction. Commenting on The Hypocrite, or the Modern Janus (1814), one critic from New Monthly Magazine noted: “we do not recollect ever having met in any work of fiction with which we are acquainted, a character so completely villainous as the principle figure in this novel”. She wrote eleven novels including An Angel’s Form and A Devil’s Heart (1818) and Italian Vengeance and English Forbearance (1828) which excel in the portrayal of exceedingly wicked women characters.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), miscellaneous writer, born in Manchester, earned his living mainly through journalism. Around 1804, he first used opium for the relief of pain caused by a tooth abscess. He became an addict and in 1822 published his most well-known work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater. De Quincey also wrote about his “opium-shattered” stream-of consciousness state in an essay “The English Mail Coach” (1849). Another of his essays is “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts” (1827) which amply demonstrates his aptitude for the Gothic. De Quincey’s historical novel Klosterheim or The Masque (1832) deals with religious persecution in the Rhinelands and is centred around a mysterious despotic being who is eventually unmasked.

Denis Diderot (1713-84), philosopher, was the Editor of the Encyclopédie completed in 1772. He also published two plays and some fiction including Les Bijoux indiscrets (1748) dealing with licentiousness and The Nun (1780). The latter was originally composed as a hoax to entice the Marquis de Croismare to return to Paris to help a supposed nun, called Suzanne Simonin, who had escaped from a convent and was seeking his protection. The novel that emerged documents the horrors of convent life inflicted on a young woman forced to take the veil by her family. It contains a graphic account of lesbianism and the film adaptation of the novel made by Jacques Rivette was banned for French cinemas in 1967.

Eliza Fenwick, (fl.1795-1828) miscellaneous writer and novelist, married the editor, John Fenwick, separating in 1800 after he was forced to flee his debtors. Fenwick published educational books but only one novel, Secresy: or, The Ruin on the Rock which was an epistolary and sentimental work warning against the dangers of excessive sensibility for women. It examines the effects of two different kinds of education on two girls. The importance of female friendship emerges from the text. Fenwick had some notable women friends namely Mary Hays, Mary Robinson and Mary Wollstonecraft, who she was with at her death following child-birth. Fenwick helped Wollstonecraft’s husband William Godwin [q.v.] by caring for the new baby Mary [q.v.]. She died in Rhode Island in 1840.

Edward Fitzball, (1792-1873), a pseudonym of Edward Ball, novelist and dramatist, was “the creator of crepuscular melodramas based on popular Gothic novels” (Frank, The First Gothics, p.14). He turned Hoffman’s tale, The Devil’s Elixir, which J.T. Bealby noted could “scarcely be read without shuddering”, (Summers, Gothic Quest, p. 243) into a musical romance, performed at Covent Garden in 1829.
His Gothic romance, The Black Robber (1819), is a blood-bath bordering on Jacobean drama. The anti-hero, Ulric St Julien who had been forced to become a monk, falls in love with a novice Julia. She is punished by being put to death by the monks. In retaliation, Ulric escapes to become the Black Robber, returning to kill the Abbot and burn down the monastery.

Joseph Fox junior, novelist, who came from Brighton, published his first novel Tancred, a Tale of Ancient Times (1791) with the Minerva Press. It was an amateurish effort but full of full-blooded Gothic themes. The evil Lady Marguerita after abandoning her infant son, Tancred, by exposing him in the forest, murders two of her husbands and plans to wed the Baron Murcia. Finally, she is reunited with her son, who is the heir of Rochdale, before driving a poniard into her heart. This was followed by Santa-Maria: or The Mysterious Pregnancy (1797), which has been compared to Marquis de Sade’s Juliette (1797). Fox’s promise to his reader was “to make the sensitive soul thrill with horror [and] to make the very hair stand perched on its native habitual roost”.

“Sophia L. Frances” is a pseudonym for a Gothic novelist who is unlikely to be either Francis Lathom or Sophia L. Frances as suggested. No evidence to establish the author’s true identity has emerged. Three of the novelist’s four ‘romances’ were published by Minerva Press. The Nun of Miserecordia, or The Eve of All Saints (1807) concerns the story of a wicked father who is murdered as retribution for seduction. In 1806 it was followed by Vivonio, or The Hour of Retribution by a “Young Lady” (1806) and then in 1809 by Angelo Guicciardini or The Bandit of the Alps (1809) whose eponymous hero turns out to be the bandit. Her Nun of Misericordia (1807) out-bleeds Lewis’s [q.v.] “bleeding nun”.

William Godwin (1756-1836), philosopher and novelist, was the father of Mary Shelley [q.v.] and husband to Mary Wollstonecraft whose memoirs he published in 1798. His anarchistic Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) underpinned his desire for social reform. In his novel Caleb Williams (1794), Godwin draws on the conventions of terror fiction to convey a social message. His most Gothic novel is St Leon (1799) about a Rosicrucian who has obtained the secret of immortality. His interest in the undead passes over to his Lives of the Necromancers (1834) which includes biographical entries on magicians such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and John Dee as well as on nefarious subjects such as “necromancy” “alchemy “talismans and amulets” “sylphs and gnomes” and “salamanders and undines”.

C. D. (Haynes) Golland, Minerva Press novelist, had a father who published a Gothic novel under the initials of D.F.H. No copies survive of her first novel Castle Le Blanc. Her extant novels are lengthy and include The Foundling of Devonshire, or Who is She? (1818), Augustus and Adeline, or The Monk of St Barnardine (1819) and Eleanor, or The Spectre of St Michael’s (1821). The Ruins of Ruthvale Abbey (1827) tells of how Monimia Beauville trains Rosa Sedley into becoming a Gothic heroine. Lord Darlington is recruited as the villain but starts to take his part too seriously thus turning mock Gothic into real terror for the heroine. The moral comfort of Hannah More is quoted at the end. Golland’s last novel was The Witch of Aysgarth (1841).

Sarah Green (1808-1824), novelist, wrote nineteen novels over a 34 year period, sometimes using the pen-name “A Cockney”. She drew attention to social issues including those relating to women in novels such as her Mental Improvement for a Young Lady on her Entrance into the World (1793). In Deception (1813), a young woman manages to extricate herself from a potential rapist by impersonating a phantom in dressing in a sheet and brandishing a dagger. The Carthusian Friar (1814) also tells of how the innocent Matilda escapes rape after having been ensnared by the villainous Father Scoriani, who is in league with a corrupt abbess. Green’s The Private History of the Court of England (1808) was considered so scandalous that it was subject to censorship.

William Child Green (fl. 1821-1831) novelist, modelled himself on Beckford [q.v.], Walter Scott, Maturin [q.v.] and Radcliffe [q.v.] for his Gothic novels, beginning with The Maniac of the Desert (1821), which were popular choices for the circulating libraries. The Abbot of Montserrat: or The Pool of Blood (1826) had been inspired by Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer while the influence of Scott is evident in The Prophecy of Duncannon: or The Dwarf and the Seer (1824) and of Beckford in Alibeg the Tempter, A Tale Wild and Wonderful (1831). His The Alberines: or The Twins of Naples (1832), where the supernatural is done to death, exemplifies “the common flaws of the Gothic novel in its death throes” (Frank, The First Gothics, pp.126-7).

Sophia Griffith, novelist, wrote the Gothic parody, She would be a heroine. By Sophia (1816). It has shades of Barrett’s [q.v.] The Heroine and Ircastrensis’s [q.v.] Love and Horror but without their satiric bite. By comparison, Griffith’s novel is a milder mockery of Gothic conventions which tells the story of the budding Gothic heroine, Lady Georgina Portmore, who transgresses social norms by cross-dressing and also by guiding ghost-spotting expeditions to local ruins. At the climax of the novel, she gets lost in the family crypt and re-emerges a reformed de-Gothified character, who repents of her Gothic follies.

Emilia Grosett, novelist, wrote the chapbook The Monastery of St Mary: or The White Maid of Avenel (n.d.) This is an amalgamated and condensed version of two novels by Walter Scott, The Abbot (1819) and The Monastery (1820). A knowledge of the latter is indispensable to an understanding of the sequence of events in Grosett’s plagiarised and condensed version. The main Gothic interest concerns the ghostly sightings of the white lady of Avenel, a spectre who waylays Father Phillip, the protector of her daughter Mary, as he approaches the Monastery of St Mary.

Carl Grosse, novelist, who was the self-styled Marquis of Pharnusa, published romances between 1790-1805. These included The Dagger (1795) and his most well-known work, Horrid Mysteries. A Story from the German of the Marquis of Grosse (1796), translated by Peter Will, which P.B. Shelley [q.v.] kept under his pillow in order to induce nightmares. The story tells of the quest of the hero, Don Carlos, to hunt down the ungodly Illuminati, a secret society that had fascinated Shelley (see Peacock [q.v.]). Anarchical conspiracy is the focus of Grosse’s other “Magico-Political Tale. Founded on Historical Facts” which is the sub-title of The Victim of Magical Delusion (1795) set during the Portuguese Revolution and influenced by Friedrich Schiller’s Ghost-Seer (1800).

Miss Guion, novelist, of whom virtually nothing is known, was the author of the Gothic chapbook The Life and Singular Memoirs, of Matilda, Countess de Lausanne: or, The Unfortunate Victim of Parental Ambition: A Gothic story. (1802) published by S. Fisher and T. Hurst of London. Bound in the same volume is another Gothic chapbook entitled The Castle of Formosa: or The treacherous Moor: and The rivals: or Love and Superstition (1802). The latter was set in Tenerife and based allegedly on a true story. The volume travelled under a number of different titles including The Unfortunate Victim of Parental Ambition, The Castle of Formosa, The Treacherous Moor, The Rivals and Love and Superstition.

Susannah Gunning (1740?-1800) novelist, married Captain Gunning, the grandson of a Viscount, who embroiled her in his intrigues. He was later exposed as an adulterer when he was fined £5,000 for “criminal conversation” with his tailor’s wife and fled to Naples with his mistress. Gunning declared that she had regretted twenty-two out of twenty-three years of marriage and fictionalised her private life in some of her fiction. She wrote 13 novels, six of which were epistolary. Her fiction includes Barford Abbey (1768) and Coombe Wood (1783), where she satirises marriage. Gunning’s tendency to exaggerate in her writing prompted Lady Harcourt to coin the term “minific” which refers to her maiden name of Minifie which she had used as a pen name.

M. H. Hales, Esq, novelist, who published The Astrologer: or, The Eve of St Sebastian (1821) and De Willenburg: or, The Talisman, A Tale of Mystery (1821). For The Astrologer, the author imitates T.J. Horsley Curties for its horror and Ann Radcliffe for its terror but falls short of achieving any true Radcliffean suspense. The astrologer is a monk called Osmia, who draws up a doom-laden horoscope for the hero Sebastian. Alongside his beloved Elvira, Sebastian encounters an apparition, which, by promising to be his guide, fulfils the astrological prophecy. Not surprisingly, the spectre turns out to be none other than the monk Osmia, who had mysteriously disappeared.

Ann Mary Hamilton, novelist, blurs the boundaries between domestic fiction and Gothic horror in her novels, which include Montalva: or, The Annals of Guilt (1811). The hallmark of her writing is the reform of a villainous character into a paradigm of goodness and compassion. As her hero Stephano Montalva demonstrates, these transformations are not entirely convincing and detract from the Gothic momentum. As a dissolute degenerate, he raped and murdered the innocent Valeria and then poisoned his friend, Ferdinando D’Rosorio, in order to seize his wife and child. After his conversion, horror interest is revived when a demonic apparition tempts him to kill a young girl. But he refrains when the ghost of Valeria appears to inform him that it is their child.

Ann Julia Hatton (1764-1838), novelist, who wrote under the name “Ann [or Anne] of Swansea”, was the younger sister of Sarah Siddons. She taught herself to read and wrote her first play aged 11, which was performed by her father’s theatrical company in Brecon. Hatton believed that because of her limp and squint, her family ridiculed her as “the Genius”, and had her apprenticed to a mantua-maker. In 1783, she married a bigamist and then earned her living by lecturing for James Graham, the quack doctor. Attempting suicide in Westminster Abbey, she was accidentally shot in the face in a brothel. Hatton wrote 14 novels between 1810 and 1831 mainly for Minerva Press, which included the exceedingly gory Cesario Rosalba: or the Oath of Vengeance (1819).

Haynes see Golland

Hedgeland see Kelly

Elizabeth Helme (fl. 1787-1814), who was married to a schoolmaster of Brentford, wrote in a number of different genres including books for children such as James Manners, Little John, and their Dog, Bluff (1799). She was an established sentimental and Gothic novelist connected with the Minerva Press whose first novel of this kind was Louisa: or the Cottage on the Moor (1787) which ran to five editions. This was followed by Clara and Emmeline (1788) then Duncan and Peggy (1794). A longer work was The Farmer of Inglewood Forest (1796) which was written in places in the style of Ann Radcliffe. Her most successful romance was St Margaret’s Cave: or The Nun’s Story (1801). So popular was her writing that her work was reprinted late into the 19th century.

G.D. Hernon, novelist, of whom little is known, wrote Louisa: or, The Black Tower (1805), set in a gloomy forest in Lancashire where Mr Gerrard, a widower, resides with his daughter, Louisa. She is captured by bandits headed by Captain Rifle (an alias for Mr Hodge) whose wife wanders around at night robed as a white phantom hunting for victims for her own malevolent designs. Every day Mr Gerrard secretly visits a hidden apartment in the Black Tower where he has secreted the corpse of his wife so that he can spend many hours contemplating what Montague Summers describes as her “uncorrupted charms” (Gothic Quest, p. 367).

Anthony Frederick Holstein, (fl. 1809-1815), pseudonym, novelist, whose sex is unknown supplied Minerva Press with a dozen Gothic novels. The author’s forte was more as a connoisseur in horror than as a doyen of terror. 1810 was a productive year, heralding The Assassin of St Glenroy: or, The Axis of Life, The Miseries of an Heiress and Love, Mystery, and Misery! prefaced with the author’s “Apology for the Appearance of a Spectre”. Sir Francis Errol is the arch seducer of Rosalia Sutherland, who is imprisoned in a Gothic castle because of an undisclosed inheritance where she encounters the aforementioned spectre. Some of the Gothic vignettes are fleshed out in the The Assassin of St Glenroy (1810). Other novels include The Modern Kate: Or a Husband Perplexed (1811) and The Scotswoman (1814).

William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), miscellaneous writer, was the son of Samuel Ireland, a rare book dealer. William passed on to his father documents he had forged including an original version of King Lear, portions of Hamlet and two undiscovered Shakespeare plays. The plagiarism was eventually uncovered and William disgraced. His first romance The Abbess (1799) is written in the style of Matthew Lewis [q.v.] particularly in its description of the licentiousness of the Superior of the Immaculate Sisterhood of Santa Maria. Rimualdo: or, The Castle of Badajos (1800) is another Gothic extravaganza, exulting in a plethora of murder and of ghosts. The valiant hero Rimualdo out-does the average Gothic heroine by instantly dropping into a swoon on witnessing a terrifying vision.

Ircastrensis, novelist, has adopted a pseudonym which may have been derived from the Latin word “ira” for “ire” and “castrensis” for a soldiers’ camp possibly to indicate the military precision with which the Gothic is dismantled. Unlike most Gothic parodies, which concentrate on the Gothic heroine, Ircastrensis focuses on a Gothic hero with the prosaic name of Thomas Baily. He has fallen in love with a portrait of the beautiful Ethelinda Tit, who died two hundred years before. Determined to reincarnate her, he persuades his relation Annabella to impersonate her in a series of Gothic encounters. The absurdities are summed up when Annabella continues to converse with the spectre even after she has fainted.

Mrs Fl. Isaacs (fl. 1801-1820), novelist, published at least six fictional texts including Ariel: or The Invisible Monitor (1801), Glenmore Abbey: or, The Lady of the Rock (1805), The Wood Nymph. A Novel (1813), Tales of To-Day (1816) and Earl Osric: or, The Legend of Rosamond (1820). Ariel is about a preternatural, moralising male voice, which penetrates the dungeons and funereal cell into which Rosalie is thrust. The voice guides her through a mine-field of seducers. Glenmore Abbey published by Minerva Press is a Radcliffean imitation replete with secret passages, a swooning heroine, Ellen and a terrifying secret within a forbidden enclosure. The gloomy Castle Macruther is a highland equivalent of Radcliffe’s Castle of Udolpho connected by subterranean passages to the haven, Glenmore Abbey.

Harriet Jones, novelist and educationalist, ran a school in Maidstone, publishing Belmont Lodge (1799) with Minerva Press, which she wrote “under the deepest depression of mind, in order to alleviate the sorrows of a suffering parent”. It opens with a Gothic touch telling of how Sir Gregory Belmont used to give his villagers their own tombstone in order to inculcate virtue. The Family of Santraile: or The Heir of Montault (1809) is a cliché-ridden foray into feigned madness and the spectre of murdered mother with a cast of shrill and shouting characters concerning the disputed ownership of Belford Castle. According to Frederick Frank, “there is no wilder example of the excesses of the Gothic form than this bizarre romance”. (The First Gothics, p.175)

Karl Friedrich Kahlert, novelist, is most well-known for The Necromancer: or The Tale of the Black Forest, which was translated from the German by Peter Teuthold (1794). This was one of the seven Gothic novels recommended to Catherine by Isabella in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1810). The bewildering plot coagulates beyond comprehension, consisting of a jumble of violent episodes yoked together by shocking supernatural effects. The Teutonic Black Forest setting, into which Hermann and Helfried venture, is over-run by deserted castles, bleeding shadows and other ghoulish phenomena. The necromancer is the sinister magician, Volkert, who has been executed. As Frederick Frank points out, the novel is a “splendid instance of the Schauerroman at a point of no rational return”. (The First Gothics, p. 177)

Isabella Kelly, (fl. 1794-1815), novelist, poet and educationalist was married to Colonel Kelly and later to a Mr Hedgeland. Her ten romances were written for the Minerva Press’s circulating libraries. Her first novel was the mildly Gothic Madeleine or the Castle of Montgomery (1794). Its creaking plot draws on the Gothic machinery of crumbling cloisters, mysterious apparitions and skeletons in a family closet. She moves away from her earlier domestic realism towards greater Gothic effects in her subsequent novels from The Abbey of St Asaph (1795), set in North Wales, through Ruthinglenne, or the Critical Moment (1801) to her culmination in horror, The Baron’s Daughter (1802). Violent emotion and improbable plots, along with a moralising tendency, were the hallmark of her writing.

Caroline Lamb (1785-1828), novelist and poet, born Ponsonby, was the only daughter of the third Earl of Bessborough and Lady Henrietta Frances Spencer and was brought up by the celebrated Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. In 1805, she married William Lamb, who later became Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister. In 1812, she had a scandalous love-affair with Lord Byron, which she dramatised in the Gothic farrago Glenarvon (1816), written while she was dressed in a page’s uniform. It was published anonymously in 1816, the same year that her family tried to have her certified insane and was reprinted as The Fatal Passion (1865). Lamb also wrote Graham Hamilton (1822) and Ada Reiss (1823), where South America is the backdrop for the moral drama.

George Lamb, Esq, (1784-1834) novelist, wroteThe Mysteries of Ferney Castle: A Romance of the Seventeenth Century (1809). The title reappeared the following year, but under the name of Robert Huish (1777-1850) and set in the fifteenth century The hero is Sir George Ferney, who is both bad and dangerous to know, having been physically abused by his father for forgetting the names of the horses in the stables. He surpasses himself in sadism when he takes a poor girl, Mary, to a crypt and forces her into a coffin where he plans to rape then murder her. Eventually, after a series of family reunions, Sir George is shot and is buried vampire-style at a cross-roads. The stake through his body is struck with a mighty blow from his own son.

Sarah Lansdell (born c1778) of Tenterden, novelist, wrote for Minerva Press, Manfredi, Baron St Osmund, An Old English Romance (1796), a revival of Walpole’s [q.v.] villain set in a castle collapsing under an ancestral family curse. For this puerile work, written over 12 days in stealth during her teenage years, Lansdell was accused of plagiarizing John Palmer’s [q.v.] The Mystery of the Black Tower and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The hyperbolic plot involves one of two sisters, Augusta, who turns up mad as Lady Woldemar, while seeking the ghost of her husband, whom she allegedly murdered. For the deficiencies of this romance and The Tower, or The Romance of Ruthyne (1788), Lansdell blamed her “female inability...confined education and retired situation in life.”

Francis Lathom (fl. 1795-1830 ), novelist and dramatist, was born in Norwich, the illegitimate son of an English peer. He wrote comedies and romances starting with The Castle of Ollada (1794). A reviewer for The Critical Review was concerned that “although the heroine of a romance is always sure to know ‘the true baron upon instinct,’ young ladies cannot be recommended implicitly to follow such example.” Lathom’s second Gothic work The Midnight Bell (1798) achieved lasting fame as one of Jane Austen’s [q.v.] “Northanger” novels. The bell is rung by a madwoman in a deserted castle, obsessed with the dead body of her husband. Other novels such as Mystery (1800) and Astonishment!!! (1802), proclaim Lathom as the maestro of the pithy and arresting title.

Thomas Pike Lathy (fl. 1800-1820), was born in Exeter in 1771 and brought up to be a tradesman. In 1819, he plagiarised a poem on angling of 1758 by Dr Thomas Scott of Ipswich. His novels include Usurpation (1805), a Minerva Press best-seller, telling of a wicked uncle and hysterical niece. His Minerva Press The Invisible Enemy: or, The Mines of Wielitska, a Polish Legendary Romance (1806) cashes in on a vogue for Gothic Poland through a subtitle that is almost entirely redundant to the plot. The invisible enemy is Lafranco who steals children and corpses. After miscalculating a seduction scene, he plunges to his death from a cliff. Love, Hatred and Revenge (1809) is Lathy’s replay, only this time, with a Swiss setting.

Sophia Lee (1750-1824) was the eldest child of two actors. When her mother died, she brought up her siblings including her novelist sister, Harriet, with whom she collaborated on Canterbury Tales (1797-1805). Her comedy called The Chapter of Accidents (1780) proved so successful that she was able to set up a school in Bath on the proceeds. Lee’s historical novel The Recess, or A Tale of other Times (1783-85) was another triumph. Set during the reign of Elizabeth I, it tells of how the Queen persecutes two daughters, born to Mary Queen of Scots. In accordance with a certain literary convention, Lee pretended that she was an editor rather than the inventor of the plot. She died in Clifton, Bristol.

Lebrun see Pigault-lebrun

Thomas Leland (D.D. 1722-1785), novelist, was a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. His historical novel Longsword, Earl of Salisbury (1762) pioneered the Gothic romance, appearing two years before Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765). The malevolent monk, Reginhald, is “the sire of the whole unholy brood of monastic fiends and baronial tyrants who stalk through the pages of the Gothic novel” (Frank, The First Gothics, p. 208). The title hero has returned from the Gascoigne wars, disguised as a pilgrim. He narrowly escapes being poisoned by the brother of the villainous Reginhald. The novel was dramatised by Leland’s protégé Hall Hartson as The Countess of Salisbury: A Tragedy, and was regularly performed, starring Sarah Siddons in the title role.

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), novelist and politician, launched Ambrosio or The Monk on an unsuspecting public in 1796. This lurid, sadistic and dissolute tale of monastic corruption was the English debut of the German Schauerroman and the progenitor of the horror branch of Gothic fiction. The Monk was written as a palliative to the boredoms of The Hague where Lewis is staying as a young man. Lewis also wrote dramas such as The Castle Spectre, which opened at Drury Lane in 1797. The Wood Daemon (Drury Lane, 1807) tells of the wicked Count Hardyknute’s pact with the Daemon to sacrifice his child for youth and wealth. The tale was continued in One O’Clock! Or, The Knight and the Wood Daemon, (Lyceum, 1811).

Charles Lucas (1769-1854) miscellaneous writer and clergyman, became the curate at Avebury, Wiltshire in 1791 where he wrote a poem about the stone circles. His most well known novel is The Infernal Quixote, A Tale of the Day (1801) with a preface written by the devil and dedication to William Pitt. The title anti-hero is the Lord James Marauder who, as a freethinker, is cast as son of Satan. Marauder satanically brings about the Irish rebellion of 1798 and corrupts women with Godwinian ideas of free love. Lucas’s embrace of conservative politics is further evident in his Free Thoughts on a General Reform (1796). He also wrote The Abissinian Reformer, or the Bible and the Sabre (1808) and copious religious verse.

Anna Maria Mackenzie (fl.1783-1798) novelist, using the sobriquet, “Ellen of Exeter” wrote at least 16 novels and was the daughter of an Essex coal merchant. She married a Mr Cox who died after losing money, leaving her with four children. She earned her living through writing and became a leading Minerva Press novelist. Her first novel, Burton Wood (1783), written in letters, tells of how the heroine’s marriage is nearly destroyed by a jealous rival. Monmouth (1790), which is set in the Restoration, is considered to be her finest work. In Slavery, or The Times (1792), she romanticises a half-African slave while Dusseldorf: or The Fratricide (1798) is a pot-pourri of a maiden in distress, menacing riders, and a wicked master.

Charles Maturin (1780-1824) novelist, dramatist and clergyman, was born in Dublin of Huguenot descent. He graduated from Trinity College in 1800 as a Classics scholar and was ordained a minister in 1803. He published Fatal Revenge or, The Family of Montorio in 1807 in which Father Schemoli is a precursor for his most enduring character Melmoth. In his next novel The Milesian Chief (1812), Maturin explores Irish history and the anguish of thwarted love which “brings madness with it, but it brings the joy of madness too”. Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) is a series of tales in a Chinese box arrangement permeated by the sinister and suffering figure of Melmoth, who is a cross between Faust and the Wandering Jew.

Mary Meeke (fl. 1795-1823), Minerva Press novelist, started writing in 1795 with The Abbey of Clugny and Count St Blancard. In addition to the latter novel’s predictable repertoire of terror, are the perils of Adelaide, tied to a tree by a depraved footman and then forced to undergo the harsh strictures of an abbess. Meeke was a formula writer, who was admired by the historian Thomas Macaulay, an avid reader of her novels, who noted “they were one just like another”, relying on a rags to riches plot. She specialised in catchy titles such as Which is the Man? (1801) and Amazement (1804) and wrote more boldly under the pseudonym “Gabrielli” with The Mysterious Wife (1797), The Mysterious Husband (1799), Something Odd (1804) and Something Strange (1806).

John Mitchell, novelist, published anonymously the Gothic chapbook The Spectre Mother: or, The Haunted Tower, (1800?) which is an narrative of instant shocker gratification in the space of a mere 30 pages. The villain Moresco is a transcription of Ann Radcliffe’s Montoni from The Mysteries of Udolpho. He murders a sleeping young woman Julia in Rovado Castle and is about to kill the child in her arms when the ghost of his murder victim intervenes. Later this spectre mother lures away Moresco’s wife whom he has imprisoned in a haunted tower. On reaching freedom, she is reunited with her former lover Montmorenci and then learns that her evil husband has died after falling off a battlement. The inevitable marriage assures a happy ending for the breathless reader.

George Moore, novelist, wrote Grasville Abbey, which was serialised as a Gothic romance in Lady’s Magazine from March 1793 to August 1797 in 47 instalments. Its Radcliffian terrors delineate the torments of the Maserini family over two generations as revealed by the hermit, Father Peter at Grasville Abbey. Here Percival Maserini takes refuge with the hapless Clementina, who, he rescued from a convent where she had been confined by her hateful father. The abbey is hardly restful since it is residence to a cacophony of screaming portraits, wandering spooks and spectres, which turn out to have been the invention of the anchorite Father Peter to scare those opposing the authority of Maserini’s odious cousin Count D’Ollifont.

John Moore (1729-1802), novelist, wrote Zeluco. Various Views of Human Nature Taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic (1789), whose title hero is a cross between the Byronic hero-villain and the archetypal Gothic villain. Frederick Frank describes him as a “Sicilian sadist extraordinaire” for whom “all the world’s a torture chamber and every person a potential victim” (The First Gothics, p. 254). Zeluco shows an early aptitude for evil by mashing a pet sparrow to pieces in his hand. His later exploits include having a West Indian slave flogged to death and strangling a child to death, which drives its mother mad. His female counterpart, the wicked Nerina, anticipates the heartless Victoria in Charlotte Dacre’s [q.v.] Zofloya.

Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson), (1776-1859), novelist and Irish nationalist, was born on board ship while crossing the Irish Sea. Appropriately, she became a travel writer and advocate for Ireland to the English. She started writing her first novel St Clair (1802) while working as a governess for the Featherstones at Bracklin Castle, Westmeath and wrote her second, The Novice of St Dominick (1805) while teaching the children of the Crawford family in Co. Tipperary. Her next novel was the best-selling The Wild Irish Girl (1806) whose heroine Glorvina inspired the marketing of “Glorvina” brooches and cloaks in Dublin and London. The highly successful O’Donnel (1811) that followed was a celebration of Ireland while Woman and her Master (1840) testifies to her feminist ideals.

Agnes Musgrave, novelist, was a best-selling author for Minerva Press. In the introduction to her first novel, Cicely: or the Rose of Raby. An Historical Novel (1795), she mentions visiting places described in the novel after a severe illness. Her next novel, Edmund of the Forest. An Historical Novel (1797) was popular enough to be translated into French by Francois Soules in 1798. The Critical Review describes it as containing “adventures in rapid succession, which defy all possibility of belief… Horrors are multiplied on horrors, new characters on new characters, until the reader is bewildered in a maze”. The Solemn Injunction appearing in 1798, has a similarly complicated plot, this time replete with bloody secret chambers, faked ghosts and allegations of incest.

Julia Oulton, novelist, of whom little is known wrote the Gothic romance entitled The Solemn Warning, or The Predictions Verified (1810). It was printed for Thomas Tegg and has sometimes been published under its subtitle. [“Plummer, printer”]

Owenson see Morgan

John Palmer, junior (1771-1810), actor and novelist, was the eldest son of the famous actor, John Palmer, who dropped dead on stage in 1798. Palmer junior wrote romances such as The Mystic Sepulchre (1807) and The Mystery of the Black Tower (1796) set during the reign of Edward III. The haunted “Black Tower” is where the lovely Emma is imprisoned by a villainous lord before being rescued by the noble Leonard. In the same year appeared The Haunted Cavern, about which a reviewer for The Critical Review observed; “the tale of shrieking spectres and bloody murder …requires the genius of a Radcliffe”, which Palmer clearly lacked. He did, however, excel in “hereditary dissipation” (The Secret History of the Green Room (1795), pp. 259-61).

Mrs Eliza D. Parsons (1748?-1811), novelist, was the daughter of a Plymouth wine merchant. She married a turpentine distiller with whom she had eight children. A fire destroyed their property in 1782 and her husband died less than five years later. To support her family, Parsons turned to writing sentimental and didactic novels warning against the dangers of violent passion. Most well known are those Gothic novels, listed among the seven “horrid novels” mentioned in Northanger Abbey (1818). These are The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and, The Mysterious Warning (1796) which was described in The British Critic as “agreeable but most melancholy”. Parsons’s Gothic writing was influenced by Radcliffe [q.v.] but she forfeits the suspense she generates by explaining the supernatural elements too soon.

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), satirist, essayist and poet was brought up by his mother. He published two volumes of poetry before meeting P.B. Shelley in 1812. In 1820, he published the Four Ages of Poetry (1820) to which Shelley replied in a Defence of Poetry (1821). Peacock’s prose satires include Headlong Hall (1816) Melincourt (1817), Crotchet Castle (1831) and Gryll Grange (1860-1). His most well known work is Nightmare Abbey (1818) where he satirises the Lake poets and parodies the Gothic novel genre. Scythrop Glowry, whose servant is called Diggory Deathshead, is a caricature of Shelley. While pretending to be a member of the Bavarian Illuminati, Scythrop flings off his calico dressing gown and accidentally exposes himself to a lady.

Mary Pickard, novelist, wrote The Castle of Roviego: or, Retribution (1805), which is an example of sentimental Gothic set in Sicily that draws on Radcliffean landscape and may have been influenced by Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance. The Count of Rialves’s only son Alfonso, while away at sea, is told by a disembodied voice to hasten back to his beloved Rosalia, who has mysteriously disappeared. He disembarks at Palermo and returns to the Castle Roviego, which contains some supernatural surprises though these hardly compensate for the lack of villainy in the novel. When the lovers are reunited, Father Anselmo fatally sabotages the Gothic milieu by reminding them of the beneficence of the creator of the universe.

Joshua Pickersgill, novelist, wrote The Three Brothers (1803), a four volume Gothic romance, which inspired works by Byron, Matthew Lewis [q.v.] and Mary Shelley [q.v.]. Frederick Frank describes the story with its “nauseous contact with the charnel world” as a “bloated argosy of Gothic contrivances and effects” (The First Gothics, p. 281) which refuses to be ‘“crush’d with a plot”’. It is reminiscent of Lewis’s [q.v.] The Monk (1796) and de Sade’s Justine (1791) and Juliette (1794) for its pornographic effects. One of the three brothers is forced to sit on a torture chair while subjected to the erotic titillation of Lady Laurina, the mistress of his brother Julian while his other brother, Arnaud, has diabolically exchanged his mutilated and deformed body for a new improved model.

Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault De L’Epiney Lebrun (1753-1835), dramatist and novelist, was born in Calais. He had early success as a playwright but became better known for his fiction particularly Les Barons de Felsheim (1798) and Monsieur Botte (1802). His novels which were translated into English included The Shrove-tide Child: or, The Son of a Monk, originally published as L’Enfant du Carnaval (1792). Another was The Monk of the Grotto, or Eugenio and Virginia (1800) which, for its Minerva Press debut, was translated anonymously and transformed from a lachrymose tale into a monastic shocker imbued with the darker shades of Lewis’s [q.v.] The Monk. The plot explores the painful separation of the two lovers, Eugenio and Virginia.

Mrs Mary Pilkington (1766-1839), novelist and translator, who may also have written under “Miss Pilkington”, produced around 40 books, marrying the successor to her father’s surgical practice in 1786. When her husband deserted her to become a naval surgeon, she supported her family as a governess. This gave her the grounding to write books for children, which she sought to make morally edifying. Her Gothic writing is imbued with moralistic ideals often at the cost of their Gothic effects, as in the case of The Novice or The Heir of Montgomery Castle (1814). The Accusing Spirit: or, De Courcy and Eglantine (1802) shows the triumph of Calvinistic principles over Catholic indoctrination, despite being anachronistically set the century before the birth of John Calvin.

John William Polidori (1795-1821), physician and novelist, participated in the ghost-story competition at Villa Diodati in 1816 along with Mary Shelley [q.v.] and Byron whom he had accompanied there as his companion-physician. He expanded his mentor’s fragmentary contribution into The Vampyre which was mistakenly published under the name of Lord Byron on April Fool’s Day, 1819. It was the first vampire tale in English and tells the story of the Byronic figure, Lord Ruthven, who drinks the blood of a woman he seduces. Polidori went on to write a melancholy Gothic novel called Ernestus Berchtold: or The Modern Oedipus (1819) concerning incest. He may have been so overwhelmed by Oedipal issues that he committed suicide at his father’s house in 1821.

Anna Maria Porter (1780-1832) novelist, starting writing at 13 with a series of Artless Tales (1795). In 1803, she had a play performed at Covent Garden called The Fair Fugitives. Her major work, The Hungarian Brothers (1807) about the French Revolutionary war, was translated into French. Porter also wrote the Gothic novel, The Fast of St Magdalen (1818), where she proves herself to be a connoisseur of the slaughter scene. Set in Italy at the time of Cesare Borgia, the heroine Ippolita seeks refuse in a monastery swarming with apparitions. Porter’s Roche-Blanche: or The Hunters of the Pyrenees (1822) is also Gothified history though of the Elizabethan variety. Anna died visiting her brother in Bristol and was buried there at St Paul’s church.

Jane Porter (1776-1850), novelist, was so studious as a girl that she would begin her studies at 4.30 am. For her first romance, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) about a Polish exile, she modelled some of the characters on her friends. William Maginn regarded the novel, which ran into many editions, as the best and most enduring of her works. Porter’s second novel The Scottish Chiefs (1810) was a great success in Scotland. Nicknamed by S.C. Hall as “Il Penseroso”, Porter was a handsome woman, described by Miss Mitford as the only literary lady not fit “for a scarecrow”. She died at the house of her eldest brother in Portland Square, Bristol and is commemorated with her novelist sister Anna, in the Cathedral.

Ann Ward Radcliffe (1764-1823), novelist, was the only child of William Ward and Ann Oates, who were in trade in Holborn, London. During the 1780s, the family moved to Bath where Ann met William Radcliffe whom she married in 1787. Over 8 years, she established her reputation as the “Great Enchantress” and the founder of a school of Gothic romance associated with ‘terror’ rather than with the ‘horror’ of Matthew Lewis [q.v.]. Starting with The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), she went on to produce A Sicilian Romance (1790) and The Romance of the Forest (1791). Earnings from The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797) made her one of Gothic’s highest paid novelists of her times even though Gaston de Blondeville (1826) is the only novel to contain a “real” ghost.

Mary Ann Radcliffe (1746?-1810?), novelist and polemical writer, married a fortune-hunter, with whom she had eight children, who whittled away her family estate. In her The Female Advocate: Or An attempt to Recover the Rights of Women from Male Usurpation (1799), she provides practical guidelines on how a woman can earn a living. It is ambiguous whether this is the same author, who published the Radcliffean Manfrome or The Monk (1809). The novel opens at fever-pitch, which continues unabated throughout the narrative, with Rosalia being sexually ambushed in her bedchamber by a mysterious assailant who leaves his severed hand behind. It belongs to her suitor, the ugly Prince di Manfroné who, on resuming the rape attempt, is killed by the righteous Montalto.

Rudolph Erich Raspe (1737-1794), novelist and polymath, is best known as the flamboyant author of the surreal Baron Munchausen (1785) which is a collection of the fantastical tales of an army officer. While working for Count Hesse in connection with his collection of antiques, Raspe stole valuable coins, selling them for huge sums. He was detected and fled to the Hartz mountains, where he was captured by police. On escaping, he fled to England where he wrote a chapbook, doubtless inspired by his own experience as a thief entitled Koenigsmark the Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia in which is introduced Stella, or The Maniac of the Wood. An Affecting Tale published sometime during the first decade of the nineteenth century.

Clara Reeve (1729-1807), novelist, poet and critic, was educated by her father, who proscribed advanced reading at an early age. After his death in 1755, Reeve started writing poetry, which was published in 1769. Her most acclaimed novel, The Old English Baron, was published in 1777 under the title of The Champion of Virtue. It was so popular that it was reprinted 13 times up to 1886. In the preface, Reeve states that “this story is the literary offspring of the Castle of Otranto”. She toned down the more sensational Gothic effects of Walpole’s [q.v.] novel. In her epistolary novel, The School for Widows (1791), her main character is Frances Darnford, who gathers together a group of widows in sisterly solidarity.

Mary Robinson (“Perdita”) (1758-1800), novelist and actress, after marrying Thomas Robinson, gambler and profligate, turned to writing and was feted for her poetry as the “English Sappho”. She also became an actress, attracting the attentions of the young Prince of Wales. When their love affair floundered, she tried blackmailing him. After a disastrous love affair with Colonel Banastre Tarleton and the onset of a paralysis, she started writing novels: Vancenza: The Dangers of Credulity (1792), Walsingham, or, The Pupil of Nature (1797) and Angelina: A Novel (1796). These sentimental melodramas are underpinned by a polemic highlighting the male abuse of women as articulated in her treatise Thoughts on the Condition of Women, and on the Injustice of Mental Subordination (1798).

Regina Maria Roche (1764?-1845) novelist, was brought up in Ireland as the daughter of a military captain. She moved to England following her marriage to Ambrose Roche in 1794. Roche wrote eleven novels, the third of these was The Children of the Abbey, which proved almost as popular as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. It is cited as Harriet Smith's favourite novels in Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) while Roche’s more frenzied Clermont is mentioned as one of the “horrid novels” in Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1816). By contrast, Nocturnal Visit (1800) suffers from a torpid plot dragged out over 4 volumes. Despite Roche’s success, she suffered “long nights of sickness and privation”, which left her in a state of “gloom and despair”.

John Russell (1792-1878), novelist and statesman, who led the Whigs in 1834, became Prime Minister in 1865. He wrote The Nun of Arrouca (1822), which was suppressed after publication, possibly because the sexual connotations surrounding the main plot were an unsuitable subject for one of Queen Victoria’s leading politicians. The sentimental story tells of the love affair between a nun Sister Catherine and an army officer Edward Pembroke, who has been fighting in the Peninsular campaign against Napoleon. These ill-starred lovers, being unable to consummate their passion, decide to separate. Dissatisfied, Pembroke goes in search of his lost love. After many years, he finds her but is so shocked by her emaciated and lustreless appearance that he falls ill and dies.

“Rosalia St Clair” (fl. 1819-34) is a pseudonym for an author of 13 novels, the earliest of which were published by the Minerva Press. Contrasts preoccupied St Clair as in The Highland Castle and the Lowland Cottage (1820). In The Son of O’Donnel (1819), she unites Irish and American, black and white, while in The First and Last Years of Wedded Life (1821), she reconciles Irish Catholic and Protestant. The Pauper Boy, or The Ups and Downs of Life (1834) begins with a first-person account of the workhouse and puts Jewish characters in a fairly sympathetic light. Other novels are Clavering Tower (1822), The Banker’s Daughters of Bristol: or Compliance and Decision (1824) and Ulrica of Saxony (1828), set in the fifteenth century.

Catherine Selden, novelist, wrote seven novels most of which were published by Minerva Press. Her first novel, The English Nun (1797), was a Gothic imitation of Diderot’s [q.v.] The Nun without the erotic explicitness. Her Count de Santerre (1797) and Villa Nova: or, The Ruined Castle (1805) are blatant imitations of Mrs Radcliffe. Less predictable is Villa Santelle, or The Curious Impertinent (1817), where the hero loses his dignity when he falls over while hiding in a suit of armour and has to be rescued by his lady. In Serena (1800), Seldon considers issues relating to wedlock, such as bigamy and an arranged marriage, from the woman’s point of view and was an admirer of the work of Mary Robinson [q.v.] and Frances Sheridan.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851), novelist and travel writer, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin [q.v.] has the impeccable Gothic credentials of having produced Frankenstein (1818) following a ghost-story competition at Villa Diodati in Switzerland. The title hero, Victor, creates a creature out of dead bodies, which turns on his maker, destroying the lives of those close to him. Other novels with distinctly Gothic themes include Valperga: or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) and The Last Man (1826). Shelley’s interest in the supernatural is evident from her essay "On Ghosts" (1824) and a number of short stories published in The Keepsake, such as "The Evil Eye" (1829), "Transformation" (1830) and "The Mortal Immortal" (1833).

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) poet, whose juvenilia included two pot-boiler novellas. The first of these Zastrossi (1810) was damned by Critical Review as “one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain”. This was followed by St Irvine: or The Rosicrucian (1811?), which Elizabeth Barrett Browning dismissed as a “piece of boarding-school lunacy”. Perhaps mercifully, his horror tale The Nightmare has never been found. Shelley abandoned his attempts in Sturm und Drang for poetry beginning with such Gothic subjects as the Wandering Jew and “Ghasta, the Avenging Demon!!!” (1810). His occult and scientific interests provided Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his future wife with a model for her hero Victor Frankenstein.

Richard Sicklemore, junior, miscellaneous writer and playwright, who like his father, was a printer and publisher in Brighton. His Gothic romances and novels include Edgar: or, The Phantom of the Castle (1798), Agnes and Leonara, a novel (1799), Mary-Jane (1800), Raymond (1801) and Rashleigh Abbey: or, The Ruin on the Rock (1805). Montague Summers suggests that he may have written The New Monk which satirically dismembers the old Monk that Lewis created. Sicklemore’s satiric inclinations are evident in his experimental Osrick: or, Modern Horrors, a romance (1809) set in South America where the title-hero rescues the Gothic virgin, Clara, from being savaged by a pack of wild dogs and then by a band of equally savage Pampas Indians.

Henry Siddons (1774-1815), novelist and actor, was the eldest child of Sarah Siddons, the famous actress, who wanted him to be a clergyman. Instead Siddons wrote plays such as Tale of Terror, or a Castle without a Spectre and The Friend of the Family of which Scott wrote: “Siddon’s play was truly flat, but not unprofitable”. His debut as a Gothic novelist was William Wallace or the Highland Hero (1791) which was slammed by a critic for The Critical Review as “the work of a schoolboy, who ought to have been better employed”. Undeterred, Siddons went on to produce five other novels, wisely leaving his name off the title page of Reginald De Torby and the Twelve Robbers (1803), which was accused of plagiarism.

Eleanor Sleath, novelist, the author of five Gothic novels, is most well known for her first, The Orphan of the Rhine (1798). Even though it was dismissed the following year by the Critical Review as one of many “vapid and servile imitations” of Radcliffe, it has been remembered as one of the seven novels mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818). Who's the murderer? (1802) met with a more favourable reception by a critic from The Monthly Magazine who was surprised to find such a “richness of language” in a Minerva Press novel. Sleath went on to publish The Bristol Heiress: or the Errors of Education (1809), The Nocturnal Minstrel: or the Spirit of the woods (1810) and Pyrenean Banditti (1811).

Catherine Smith or Catherina, novelist and actress, acted at the Haymarket theatre and also performed in a dramatisation of Matthew Lewis’s [q.v.] The Monk. For her fiction, she was given “liberal encouragement” by Minerva Press. In her verse dedication to the reviewers of her The Misanthrope Father, or The Guarded Secret (1807), she describes herself as “well-born” and the owner of a decent country estate. The novel contains the stock Gothic ingredients of counterfeit ghosts, a stolen inheritance, and a skeleton. Her novels include The Caledonian Bandit or The Heir of Duncaethal (1811), which has been listed as two separate texts, Barozzi, or The Venetian Sorceress (1815) and The Castle of Arragon: or, The Banditti of the Forest (1813).

Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) novelist and poet, born to a prosperous family, married at the age of 15, the profligate Benjamin Smith with whom she had twelve children. Her husband ended up in debtor’s prison where she briefly joined him. Smith turned to writing to support her family and her first novel Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788) was a success, its rationalisation of the supernatural influencing Ann Radcliffe. The Old Manor House (1793), regarded as the most successful of her nine novels, masterfully integrates plot with Gothic detail and spawned the chapbook abridgement, Rayland Hall: or The remarkable adventures of Orlando (1810). The plot turns on an inheritance conspiracy relating to Rayland Manor involving the worthy Orlando and the innocent orphan, Monimia.

Louisa Sidney Stanhope, novelist, produced 14 historical and Gothic romances mainly for the Minerva Press. Her first venture was Montbrasil Abbey: or, Maternal Trials (1806) which embraces domestic realism and only borders on the Gothic. In Madelina (1814), the amalgamation of these two forms makes for uncomfortable bedfellows. The Nun of Santa Maria Di Tindaro (1818) dwells more exclusively in the familiar Gothic territory of a ruthless patriarch, attempted seduction, murder and a nun bereaved of her lover. Unusually, the convent is not regarded here as a place of cruelty and confinement but rather as a welcome haven. For the heroine of Treachery (1815), who seeks out a convent to escape an undesirable marriage, it turns out to be a site of revelation.

Joseph Strutt (1749-1802), miscellaneous writer, wrote about English culture and social history. He produced a two volume Chronicle of England to the Conquest (1777-8) and tomes on the dress, habits, sports and pastimes of the English. Strutt was sufficiently interested in the visual arts to produce a Biographical Dictionary of Engravers between 1785-6. His accomplished historical Gothic novel Queenho Hall (1808) was sent in manuscript form by John Murray to Sir Walter Scott who added the last chapter. Queenho Hall, which was built in the fifteenth century, is an ancient manor house at Tewin, near Bramfield in Hertfordshire. Two incomplete poems, The Test of Guilt and The Bumpkin’s Disaster (1808) were published posthumously in one volume.

Eugene Sue (1804-57), novelist, was one of France’s most popular authors. The title heroine of The Female Bluebeard (1842) is Angelina whose secluded estate the Morne-au-Diable is where she apparently murders her husbands after one year of marriage. Her next victim is the Chevalier de Croustillac. Even though Angelina is apparently toying with bigamy and seemingly surrounded by a multi-racial band of piratical lovers, it turns out that she is faithfully married to the dead Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, and leader of the ill-fated rebellion, which ended with his execution. He is in hiding and has been using different disguises giving the impression of a male harem. This revelation of a disguised aristocrat is reminiscent of Sue’s The Mystery of Paris (1842-1843).

Mrs S. Sykes, novelist and poet, married and was later given the title of Lady. Her first novel, Margiana: or, Widdrington Tower (1808) set in the fifteenth century, was published by the Minerva Press. It is a histrionic romp into the bowels of Gothic distress. Margiana is the daughter of Lord Widdrington, who supported the recently deposed Richard II and whose declining family fortunes are symbolised by the wilting Widdrington Tower. Next was Sir William Dorien: a Domestic Story (1812), then Stories of the Four Nations (1813), containing “Montargis, a French Story”: “My Aunt Patty, an English Story”, “Lillias de Lara, a Spanish Story”: and “The Calabrian an Italian Story”. In 1815, Sykes published her verse in a volume entitled Hymns.

George Walker (1772-1847), novelist and poet, was also a successful bookseller and musical publisher. He was in a prime position to exploit the market and his Don Raphael (1803) is a pastiche of best-selling Gothic writers. His The Three Spaniards (1800) is indebted to Lewis [q.v.], out-monking The Monk. The Haunted Castle (1794), is a tribute to Walpole’s [q.v.] Castle of Otranto, while The House of Tynian (1795) and Theodore Cyphon (1796) is modelled on William Godwin’s [q.v.] social Gothic. Other novels include Two Girls of Eighteen (1806) and Adventures of Timothy Thoughtless (1813). Walker also wrote serious intellectual novels and published a volume of poems in 1801 and The Battle of Waterloo: A Poem (1815).

Horace Walpole (1717-1797), novelist, was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, who became a Whig Prime Minister in 1721. Horace also became an MP but his real aptitude lay in the Gothic. In 1749, he started reconstructing his home Strawberry Hill in the Gothic style, dramatising it as The Castle of Otranto (1764), which was greeted as a “new species of romance”. For this extravaganza of ghosts, a bleeding statue and a giant helmet that crushes a bridegroom to death, Walpole admitted: “I gave rein to my imagination; visions and passions choked me”. He inaugurated Gothic drama with his tragic play, The Mysterious Mother (1768), which was printed in a limited edition because it was about incest.

Richard Warner (1763-1857) clergyman and miscellaneous writer, was the curate of St James Church in Bath from 1795 to 1817. He was the most well known man of letters in the city and his Literary Recollections (1830) are full of anecdotes about other literary figures. Among his voluminous writings were several works on Bath, its antiquities and inhabitants. He published a large number of travelogues and numerous religious tracts and sermons. His only Gothic production is Netley Abbey (1795), which was based on an actual legend of an immured nun. In the novel, Agnes Warren is imprisoned in a gloomy cell in the cellars of the abbey as part of a plot to hive off the family estate to the wrong-doers.

Lucy Watkins, novelist, wrote the chapbook Romano Castle: or, The Horrors of the Forest. This cleverly contrived patchwork of plagiarism concerns a castle ‘haunted’ by a red-eyed skeleton, which turns out to be trickery in order to terrorise the natives. The arch-villain is the miserable patriarch Baptiste, an ex-gondolier who has turned to assassination and banditry. His son Alphonso is captured by his band of bandits and thrown in a dungeon where he beholds the golden-haired nymph, Elvira. Baptiste has imprisoned her, along with his wife, in the castle. In the end, the captor becomes the captive. Baptiste’s family are liberated from captivity and he is condemned to a life behind bars, leaving Alphonso free to marry Elvira.

Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, poet, wrote Edwy and Edilda (1783), a Gothic novel in verse, subdivided into five parts, which was published in Dublin. The narrative is arranged in stanzaic chapters or “fitts” in a balladic metre. The story is an imitation of Clara Reeve’s [q.v.], Old English Baron. It tells of the ill-fated love of the hero Edy and heroine Edilda. After saving Edilda’s life, Edy falls in love with her. The couple wants to marry but Edilda is promised to the base Esbold. She secretly meets Edy but is betrayed by her odious fiancé. The two rivals engage in mortal combat with one another and after they are slain, Edilda dies of grief.

James White, miscellaneous writer and translator, was elected a scholar of Trinity College Dublin in 1778. He was interested in political issues and produced Hints of a Specific Plan for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1788). Political satire is present within his Earl Strongbow: or the History of Richard de Clare and the Beautiful Geralda (1789) where he also ridicules Gothic melancholia as when the beautiful Geralda drowns on her wedding day. Other historical novels include The Adventures of John of Gaunt (1790) and The Adventures of King Richard Coeur de Lion (1791). Towards the end of his life, White developed a persecution complex and died destitute in the Carpenter’s Arms in 1799 in the Gloucestershire parish of Wick.

Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson, (fl. 1800-1825), novelist, produced in the form of bluebooks or chapbooks, numerous short romantic tales as well as abridgements of poplar novels. Her first publication was The Subterraneous Passage: or, Gothic Cell (1803), followed by The Wife of Two Husbands: or Fritz the Outlaw (1804), The Fugitive Countess: or The Convent of St Ursula (1807) and The Mysterious Novice: or Convent of the Grey Penitents (1809). In The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey: or The Mystery of the Blue and Silver Bag (1820), Wilkinson deconstructs the Gothic mode, at the same time, as recreating the Radcliffean romance. The setting is Martimel Castle, which contains a “martyr’s turret”, where a mysterious blue and silver bag is kept containing important marital documents.

Mrs R. P. M. Yorke, novelist, (fl 1800-1804) wrote four Gothic novels: The Valley of Collares: or, The Cavern of Horrors (1800), The Romance of Smyrrna: or, The Prediction Fulfilled!!! (1801), The Haunted Palace: or, The Horrors of Ventoliene (1801) and My Master’s Secret: or, The Troublesome Stranger (1804). The Haunted Palace is a compendium of Gothic sensationalism featuring a one handed skeleton once buried alive and a blood-drinking sect whose hell-fire club deprivations take place under the shadow of an erupting Mount Vesuvius. Implausibly, the nobleman hero falls from a great height into an Egyptian tomb, landing safely astride a marble sphinx. In The Romance of Smyrrna, the Lisbon earthquake is used to retrieve a character in peril, who has been drugged and raped by a sadistic aristocrat aided by the Inquisition.

Heinrich Zschokke, (1771-1848) novelist, wrote the German robber romance Abällino, Der Grosse Bandit (1794). An English version of this Schauerromantik, entitled The Bravo of Venice (1805), was adapted by Matthew Lewis [q.v.]. The main character has two contrasting identities, the hideous villainous persona of the assassin Abällino and the benign handsome figure of Flodoardo, who is dedicated to public duty. A conundrum emerges when as Flodoardo, the hero is promised the fair niece of the Doge, Rosabella, in exchange for delivering up to justice the lawless Abällino who is, of course, himself. By a quick change of costume, the hero manages to both fulfil his duty and win the heroine.

NOTE

Thanks are due to Nigel Biggs and Marion Glastonbury for invaluable assistance as well as to Isobel Grundy and Frederick L. Frank who helped garner material for these critical biographies. Many of these entries are unavoidably inchoate and where birth and death dates are absent, it has been because of lack of information. Textual citations have been made to Frederick L. Frank, The First Gothics: A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1987) and Montague Summers, Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel (New York: Russell and Russell, 1938).

Marie Mulvey-Roberts
University of the West of England

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