Chapter III -  "The Novel of Suspense" Mrs. Radcliffe

The vogue of Mrs. Radcliffe; her tentative beginning in The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne , and her gradual advance in skill and power; The Sicilian Romance and her early experiments in the "explained" supernatural; The Romance of the Forest , and her use of suspense; heroines: The Mysteries of Udolpho ; illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; The Italian ; villains; her historical accuracy and "unexplained" spectre in Gaston de Blondeville ; her reading; style; descriptions of scenery; position in the history of the novel.

The enthusiasm which greeted Walpole's enchanted castle and Miss Reeve's carefully manipulated ghost, indicated an eager desire for a new type of fiction in which the known and familiar were superseded by the strange and supernatural. To meet this end Mrs. Radcliffe suddenly came forward with her attractive store of mysteries, and it was probably her timely appearance that saved the Gothic tale from an early death.

The vogue of the novel of terror, though undoubtedly stimulated by German influence, was mainly due to her popularity and success. The writers of the first half of the nineteenth century abound in references to her works,[34] and she thus still enjoys a shadowy, ghost like celebrity.

Many who have never had the curiosity to explore the labyrinths of the underground passages, with which her castles are invariably honeycombed, or who have never shuddered with apprehension before the "black veil," know of their existence through Northanger Abbey, and have probably also read how Thackeray at school amused himself and his friends by drawing illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.

Of Mrs. Radcliffe's life few facts are known, and Christina Rossetti, one of her many admirers, was obliged, in 1883, to relinquish the plan of writing her biography, because the materials were so scanty.[35] From the memoir prefixed to the posthumous volumes, published in 1826, containing Gaston de Blondeville, and various poems, we learn that she was born in 1764, the very year in which Walpole issued The Castle of Otranto, and that her maiden name was Ann Ward.

Christina Rossetti

In 1787 she married William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of law, who became editor of a weekly newspaper, The English Chronicle. Her life was so secluded that biographers did not hesitate to invent what they could not discover. The legend that she was driven frantic by the horrors that she had conjured up was refuted after her death.

It may have been the publication of The Recess by Sophia Lee in 1785 that inspired Mrs. Radcliffe to try her fortune with a historical novel. The Recess is a story of languid interest, circling round the adventures of the twin daughters of Mary Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk.

Yet as we meander gently through its mazes we come across an abbey "of Gothic elegance and magnificence," a swooning heroine who plays the lute, thunderstorms, banditti and even an escape in a coffin items which may well have attracted the notice of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne ,[36] appeared in 1789.