OTHER BIOGRAPHY:

Ann (née Ward) Radcliffe (1764-1823), English author, wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), a classic example of Gothic Romance fiction. The heroine, Emily St Aubert, is imprisoned in an Apennines fortress by a sadistic villain, Count Montoni, and at the mercy of her imagination;

fate sits on these dark battlements, and frowns,
And, as the portals open to receive me,
Her voice, in sullen echoes through the courts,
Tells of a nameless deed.

Ann Radcliffe was born on 9 July 1764 in London, England. The only child of William Ward and Anne Oates Ward, it is said that she was quite shy, and reclusive in her later years. At the age of twenty-two she married William Radcliffe, lawyer, and then editor and owner of The English Chronicle. The couple had no children.

Set in Middle Ages Scotland, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: A Highland Story (1789) was Radcliffe's first novel. It was followed by A Sicilian Romance (1790) which weaves poetic vision and historical detail of Sicilian sensibilities. In A Romance of the Forest (1791) Adeline, having fled Paris and taken refuge in a desolate abbey, encounters sinister relics and endures a desperate struggle to escape its owners calculating grip to imprison her. It is also rich in detail of 19th century Roman Catholicism and oppression. Radcliffe wrote her travelogue A Journey Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany in 1795.

Her poem from the cover page of The Italian: or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797);

He, wrapt in clouds of mystery and silence,
Broods o'er his passions, bodies them in deeds,
And sends them forth on wings of Fate to others,
Like the invisible Will, that guides us,
Unheard, unknown, unsearchable.

Radcliffe's archetypal characters journey through the psyche whilst traveling through highly graphic landscapes, with allusion to numinous and sublime forces at work. These elements combined to create the suspense and drama that popularised her works and won her acclaim as one of the best female writers of the genre. She influenced such other notable authors as Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott, and Mary Wollstonecraft. She died on 7 February 1823, and lies buried in Saint George's Church, Hanover Square, London, England.

William Radcliffe published Gaston de Blondeville and On the supernatural in poetry posthumously in 1826. Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography (1996) was written by Deborah Rogers and contains an extensive bibliography and chronology of Radcliffe's life and works.

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   Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
     © Beatriz Alfonso Coxias
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    Universitat de València Pres