Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic

This book offers unique and fresh perspectives upon the literary productions of one of the most highly remunerated and widely admired authors of the Romantic period, Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823). While drawing upon, consolidating and enriching the critical impulses reflected in Radcliffe scholarship to date, this collection of essays, composed by a range of renowned scholars of the Romantic period, also foregrounds the hitherto neglected aspects of the author's work. Radcliffe's relations to Romantic-era travel writing; the complex political ideologies that lie behind her historiographic endeavours; her poetry and its relation to institutionalised forms of Romanticism; and her literary connections to eighteenth-century women's writing are all examined in this collection. Offering fresh considerations of the well-known Gothic fictions and extending the appreciation of Radcliffe in new critical directions, the collection reappraises Radcliffe's full oeuvre within the wider literary and political contexts of her time.

Preface; 1. Gothic and Romantic engagements: the critical reception of Ann Radcliffe, 1789–1850 Dale Townshend and Angela Wright; 2. Ann Radcliffe, precursors and portraits Joe Bray; 3. Ann Radcliffe and Romantic print culture Edward Jacobs; 4. Ann Radcliffe and politics James Watt; 5. Ways of seeing in Ann Radcliffe's early fiction: The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) and A Sicilian Romance (1790) Alison Milbank; 6. The heroine, the abbey and popular Romantic textuality: The Romance of the Forest (1791) Diane Long Hoeveler; 7. Popular Romanticism and the problem of belief: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) Robert Miles; 8. Transnational aesthetics in Ann Radcliffe's A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 [. . .] (1795) JoEllen DeLucia; 9. Recovering the Walpolean Gothic: The Italian: Or, the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1796–7) Jerrold E. Hogle; 10. Ann Radcliffe beyond the grave: Gaston de Blondeville and its accompanying texts Samuel Baker; 11. Ann Radcliffe's poetry: the poetics of refrain and inventory Jane Stabler; 12. Ann Radcliffe and Romantic-era fiction Sue Chaplin; 13. 'A portion of the name': stage adaptations of Radcliffe's fiction, 1794–1806 Diego Saglia.

Dale Townshend is Senior Lecturer in Gothic and Romantic Literature at the University of Stirling, Scotland. His most recent publications include Macbeth: A Critical Reader (co-edited with John Drakakis, 2013) and The Gothic World (co-edited with Glennis Byron, 2013).
Angela Wright is a Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature at the University of Sheffield and is currently Co-President of the International Gothic Association. She is author of Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764–1820 (Cambridge, 2013) and Gothic Fiction: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (2007).