About the Author

The first lady of Gothic fiction, Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) had among her devotees Jane Austen, Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Matthew Lewis to name but a few. Her darkly mysterious romances explore far-off locations, where the supernatural lurks behind every pine tree, where she takes her characters and readers on a journey through tangled forests and ruined castles, deep into the very heart of desire. The Mysteries of Udolpho is perhaps her best known work, a work of such influential nature in shaping the early Gothic genre that it is even parodied in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.