39 Facts About Ann Radcliffe

Ann Radcliffe was an English novelist, a pioneer of Gothic fiction, and a minor poet.

Ann Radcliffe has been credited with gaining respectability for Gothic fiction in the 1790s through her technique of explaining apparently supernatural elements in her novels.

Ann Radcliffe was the only child of William Ward and Ann Oates.

Biographies of Ann Radcliffe typically emphasize her illustrious distant relatives over her close relatives, who were in trade, as part of cultivating a genteel and ladylike reputation for her.

Ann Radcliffe's mother came from a family of leadmakers and glaziers.

Ann Radcliffe's father had a famous uncle, William Cheselden, who was Surgeon to King George II; her mother descended from the De Witt family of Holland and her cousins included Sir Richard Jebb, a fashionable London physician, and a Bishop, Samuel Hallifax.

In 1772, Ann Radcliffe's father moved to Bath to manage a shop owned by Thomas Bentley and Josiah Wedgwood, makers of Wedgwood porcelain.

Ann Radcliffe's father supplemented his income by renting rooms to lodgers.

Ann Radcliffe often paid extended visits to his home in Chelsea, London and later Turnham Green.

In 1787, when Ann Radcliffe was 23 years old, she married William Ann Radcliffe, an Oxford-educated journalist.

The couple were married in Bath, but soon after moved to London, where William Ann Radcliffe got a job working for a paper.

Ann Radcliffe published her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, in 1789 at the age of 25, and published her next four novels in short succession.

Ann Radcliffe provided some financial support to her mother-in-law, Deborah Radcliffe.

Ann Radcliffe published The Italian in 1797, the last novel she would publish in her lifetime.

Ann Radcliffe ceased publishing and lived privately for the next 26 years.

Ann Radcliffe spent the rest of her adult life travelling and living a comfortable life with her husband.

Ann Radcliffe wrote poetry and another novel, Gaston de Blondeville, which was published after her death.

Ann Radcliffe suffered from asthma, for which she received regular treatment.

In early 1823, Ann Radcliffe went to Ramsgate, where she caught a fatal chest infection.

Ann Radcliffe died 7 February 1823 at the age of 58 and was buried in a vault in the Chapel of Ease at St George's, Hanover Square, London.

Ann Radcliffe published five novels during her lifetime, which she always referred to as "romances".

The Romance of the Forest was popular with readers, and in the second edition, Ann Radcliffe began adding her own name to the title page.

In 1794, three years later, Ann Radcliffe published The Mysteries of Udolpho.

In 1797, Ann Radcliffe published The Italian, the last novel published in her lifetime.

Ann Radcliffe was known for including supernatural elements but eventually giving readers a rational explanation for the supernatural.

Usually, Ann Radcliffe would reveal the logical excuse for what first appeared to be supernatural towards the end of her novels, which led to heightened suspense.

Ann Radcliffe often wrote about places she had never visited.

Ann Radcliffe was, indeed, a prose poet, in both the best and the worst senses of the phrase.

Ann Radcliffe's work have been considered by some scholars to be part of a larger tradition of anti-Catholicism within Gothic literature; her works contain hostile portrayals of both Catholicism and Catholics.

Ann Radcliffe portrays the confessional as a "danger zone" controlled by the power of the priest and the church.

Some scholars have suggested that Ann Radcliffe's anti-Catholicism was partly a response to the 1791 Roman Catholic Relief Act passed by the British parliament, which was a major component of Catholic emancipation in Great Britain.

Ann Radcliffe influenced many later authors, both by inspiring more Gothic fiction and by inspiring parodies.

Ann Radcliffe is known for having spawned a large number of imitators of the "Ann Radcliffe School", such as Harriet Lee and Catherine Cuthbertson.

Ann Radcliffe was admired by French authors including Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, and Charles Baudelaire.

Ann Radcliffe's journals are no longer extant, though a few excerpts were published shortly after her death.

Only three documents directly related to Radcliffe could be located by the bibliographer Deborah D Rogers in 1996: her forty-two page commonplace book, a note to someone named Miss Williamson, and her original contract for Udolpho.

The best-known biography of Ann Radcliffe was published as a preface to some of her posthumous works in 1826.

Rictor Norton, author of Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe, argues that these years were "dominated by interpretation rather than scholarship" and that information was repeated rather than traced to a reliable source.

The film depicts Ann Radcliffe meeting the young Jane Austen and encouraging her to pursue a literary career.