3.

Horace Walpole
Original name Horatio Walpole
Born Sept. 24, 1717, London,
Died March 2, 1797
English writer, connoisseur, art historian and collector, politician
Remembered for
Strawberry Hill, the Gothic home he built in Twickenham, south-west London
where he revived the Gothic style,
The Castle of Otranto, considered to be the first Gothic novel.
Letters, which are valued as a significant insight into the social and political
circumstances.
Life
Horace Walpole was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the British Prime Minister
(First Lord of the Treasury in 1721), and the great statesman, who died Earl of Orford.
Horace Walpoles father died in 1745. The eldest son, who succeeded to the earldom,
died in 1751, and left a son, George, who was for a time insane, and lived until 1791.
As George left no child, the title and estates passed to Horace Walpole, then seventyfour years old, and the only uncle who survived. Horace Walpole thus became Earl of
Orford, during the last six years of his life. As to the title, he said that he felt himself
being called names in his old age. He died unmarried, in the year 1797, at the age of
eighty.
Education

Kings College, Cambridge.

Eton, where he formed a school friendship with Thomas Gray (later to write An
Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard). In 1739 Gray was travelling-companion
with Walpole in France and Italy (Grand Tour: 17391741) until they started
arguing and parted; but the friendship was afterwards renewed, and remained
firm to the end.

Strawberry Hill
Horace Walpole was also partly responsible for the 18 th-century Gothic architectural
revival.
1

He acquired a small villa at Twickenham in 1747 and transformed it into a pseudoGothic showplace known as Strawberry Hill.
In 1749, after a summer spent visiting and studying ruins, churches and old houses,
Walpole determined to reconstruct his home, Strawberry Hill, into a Gothic style villa,
surrounding himself with what was then considered to be fashionable as objects of
taste, flowers, and the quiet Thames.
He revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors.
He doubled the size of the building, adding battlements, pinnacles, a gallery,a cloister
and two towers, and filling it with art objects and rare books, pictures and curios, and
amassed a valuable library.
It was here that he had the dream which supposedly inspired Otranto - of a gigantic
hand in armour resting on a banister a very natural dream for a head filled like mine
with Gothic story.
The house was open to tourists and became widely known in Walpole's own lifetime.
He also had a private printing press, at which he printed his own works and those of his
friends, notably Gray's Odes of 1757. It remained in operation for 32 years

Works:

Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors (1758), an earlier work by Walpole,

evidence that he had read some early romances, but there are not many similarities
between Otranto and them.
Anecdotes of Painting in England, 4 vol. (176271), a contribution to art history.
The Castle of Otranto (1765). Considered to be the first Gothic novel.
The Mysterious Mother (1768), the first Gothic drama.
o A tragedy, the theme of incest.
o Only 50 copies of the play were produced, on Walpoles private printing press
at Strawberry Hill, and circulated amongst his friends.
o The play never reached the stage: even in print, it was suppressed by its
author and withheld from public sale until 1791. The problem was the nature
of the crime, which many of those who read it felt was too revolting to be
offered as part of an entertainment.
However, the play had a growing underground reputation. It influenced the
developing strand of psychological Gothic, distinct from supernatural fiction, found in

the work of Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, Joanna Baillie, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron,
and Edgar Allan Poe.
Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (1768),
amateur historical speculations;
On Modern Gardening (1780)
A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole (1784)
Hieroglyphic Tales (1785)
His private correspondence of some 4,000 letters
Memoirs (first published 182259) of the reigns of George II and III, a record of
political events of his time.

The Castle of Otranto

After enlarging his country manse and turning it into a Gothic edifice with towers,
battlements, and cloistered gardens, Walpole used it as a setting for his famous Gothic
romance, The Castle of Otranto.

Influential and critically acclaimed - Anna Laetitia Barbauld, the critic and author was
an admirer.
generally regarded as the first Gothic novel.
1764, using his own press and anonymously, with a very simple subtitle: A Story,
without mentioning the word Gothic claiming on its title page that it was a translation
"from the Original Italian of Onuphirio Muralto".
The term gothic was added in the second edition, published in 1765, when the novel
got its full title as it is known today: The Castle of Otranto: a Gothic Story.
The second edition's preface was a manifesto for the modern Gothic romance

Themes

parental duties to offspring and

the righting of previous wrongs that plague a familys history.

The story is filled with characters bearing Germanic names (Conrad, Jerome, Theodore)
and Italianate names (Bianca, Hippolita, Matilda, Alfonso the Good), and sets the action
in a deliberately vague era near the end of the Middle Ages.
CONVENTIONS
The story, as claimed by Walpole, was suggested by a dream
3

Establishes Gothic conventions.

Walpole used the Gothic motif from the chivalric era of the
haunted castle, trap-doors, feudal tyranny, and
the manipulation of nature via the pathetic fallacy.
His tyrannical Manfred anticipated the menace of the Byronic hero.
A mixture of both ridiculous and sublime supernatural elements.
The plot finally reveals how one family is tainted in a way that served as a
model for successive Gothic plots.
Walpole initiates his story as though it were a stage tragedy.
Oh, my lord! the prince! the prince! the helmet! the helmet!.
Foreshadowing suspense.
Manfred arrives too late to save his son and heir from the weight of the ominous
black-feathered helmet 100 times larger than normal, which reflects the authors
tendency to exaggerate.
Manfred attempts to marry Isabella, the groomless bride-to-be. In protest, the
nose of a statue sheds three drops of blood,
a foreshadowing of the conflict to come.
With a gesture to both medieval and modern traditions, the inventive author
overlays the episodes with
exotic settings in Algiers and Sicily, death in the Holy Land,
supernatural rustlings and sighs,
temporary insanity,
a portrait come to life,
a secret passage to a convent,
enslavement,
the intervention of clergy, and
a mysterious friars disclosure of Otrantos real heir.
Walpole inserts the basis of a literary and cinematic clich, a gust of wind that
extinguishes the heroines light, leaving her to flounder in total darkness.
Walpole identified sorrow and melancholy as a proof of true love in the
conclusion of The Castle of Otranto. Before Theodore, a surviving suitor, can accept
Isabella as a bride, he converses at length with her and concludes that

he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could
forever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.
The story opens with terror and supernatural there is a wedding, but it is overshadowed by an ancient prophecy. Then, the groom is mysteriously crushed to death
with a giant helmet.
The events are followed by strong emotional reactions of the characters:
the horror and inexplicable anger of the father, Prince Manfred,
the grief of the mother, Hippolita,
he daughter Matildas eagerness to comfort others,
the sympathy of the bereaved bride Isabella combined with relief,
the panic of the crowd who see the dead groom

rather farcical and melodramatic story

full of supernatural machinery
interpreted by many as a burlesque
He establishes the helplessness of female characters with such theatrical
outbursts as
Ah me, I am slain! cried Matilda sinking: Good heaven, receive my soul!

The word Gothic is said to be added to annoy the critics who objected to the
experiment how could a Gothic story be written by a contemporary author? Namely, at
the time when the novel was written, the Gothic age was thought to be the age of
barbarism and superstition - from the time when Visigoths brought about the fall of the
Roman Empire, up to the Renaissance and the revival of classic learning, sometimes
considered to extend to the Reformation in the XVI century and the break with
Catholicism.
He also claimed that it was written as the result of a dream and automatic writing
(A forerunner of stream-of-consciousness style, automatic writing is a method of
disengaging the conscious mind from rationality to allow musings, dreams,
unpremeditated motifs, and subconscious desires to control the production of narrative).
Prefaces
The first preface
describes (counterfeit) origin for the text, presenting it as an Italian work dating
back to 1529, mentioning that it may have been written even earlier, between1095
and1245, at the time of the Crusades, when the story is set.
5

To set the stage, he deliberately misleads the reader claiming that the story is a
sixteenth-century edition of an antique Italian manuscript by the fictitious Onuphrio
Muralto, and translated by one William Marshall, an English gentleman.
The second preface.
While the preface to the first edition presents the novel as a genuine medieval
romance. In the second edition, Walpole identifies the narrative with a straightforward
title, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story. His use of the word Gothic in the subtitle
sets the story in the medieval era.
The preface to the second edition tries to define a new mode of writing:
It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern.
In the former, all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always
intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not
been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict
adherence to common life. But if, in the latter species, Nature has cramped
imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old
romances. The actions, sentiments, and conversations, of the heroes and
heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed to put
them in motion.

Revival / New kind of romance

Walpole was well qualified to be the leader of the revival of romance.
He was the son of the late Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford.
He could allow himself to disregard the trends and common opinion as he had excellent
incomes from the government he had several positions that basically required him to
do nothing for a handsome amount of money - lived with his father, and amused
himself.
The story was reissued in 1765 - a manifesto for a new species of romance, which
openly advocated a blend [of] the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern,

ancient was all imagination and improbability

modern was governed by the rules of probability connected with common life

By merging the two into one, he also advocates that the powers of fancy
making the characters think, speak and act, as it might be supposed mere men
and women would do in extraordinary positions.
6

Walpole wanted to combine

the unnatural occurrences associated with romance and
the naturalistic characterization and dialogue of the novel.

This new formula was offered as a new route for men of brighter talent to follow.
Novel vs Gothic
The novel in its realist form evolved in the first half of the 18 th century in reaction to the
romance tradition that had been popular up to the late 17 th century.
Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding wanted to distinguish their works
of fiction from the outdated romance.
The novel means literally the new relating to a new, more credible and progressive
genre of fiction that was more suitable for an enlightened age than the old - the
romance.
However, in spite of the rhetoric, the dividing line between novel and romance was not
absolutely clear-cut,
they had to answer to the demands of entertainment,
their works of art had to have effective moral messages, that would be useless if not
paired with strong emotions.
Accordingly, they used the episodes that would be suitable for Gothic fiction
Novelists used the examples of the so-called natural horror, and not the imagination
that went beyond rational.
Shakespeare
In the second preface, he chose to shelter [his] own daring under the cannon of the
brightest genius this country, at least, has produced.
The key scenes of supernatural terror remind of Shakespeares motifs
o the vision of the dagger,
o the visit to the cave of the three witches in Macbeth;
o the ghost scenes from Hamlet.
Shakespeare
Historically, situated on the cusp between Gothic and enlightened times.
7

his language was regarded as striking a perfect balance between ancient and
modern.

Shakespeares practice that remained controversial even in Britain: the inclusion of

comic scenes in the tragedies.

Further reading:
- Jerrold E. Hogle (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, Cambridge University
Press 2002
- Catherine Spooner, Emma McEvvoy, The Routledge Companion to Gothic, Routledge,
London and New York, 2007
- Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature, New York: Facts on File, 2005.
- H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature.

The Castle of Otranto, Preface to the Second Edition

THE FAVOURABLE manner in which this little piece has been received by the public, calls
upon the author to explain the grounds on which he composed it. But, before he opens those
motives, it is fit that he should ask pardon of his readers for having offered his work to them
under the borrowed personage of a translator. As diffidence of his own abilities and the novelty
of the attempt, were the sole inducements to assume the disguise, he flatters himself he shall
appear excusable. He resigned the performance to the impartial judgement of the public;
determined to let it perish in obscurity, if disproved; nor meaning to avow such a trifle, unless
better judges should pronounce that he might own it without blush.
It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former,
all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and
sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great
resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if, in the
latter species, Nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally
excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, and conversations, of the heroes and
heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion.
The author of the following pages thought it possible to reconcile the two kinds. Desirous of
leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and
thence of creating more interesting situations, he wished to conduct the mortal agents in his
drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak, and act, as it
might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions. He had observed,
that, in all inspired writings, the personages under the dispensation of miracles, and witness to
the most stupendous phenomena, never lose sight of their human character: whereas, in the
productions of romantic story, an improbable event never fails to be attended by an absurd
dialogue. The actors seem to lose their senses, the moment the laws of nature have lost their tone.
As the public have applauded the attempt, the author must not say he was entirely unequal to the
task he had undertaken: yet, if the new route he has struck out shall have paved a road for men of
brighter talents, he shall own, with pleasure and modesty, that he was sensible the plan was
capable of receiving greater embellishments than his imagination, or conduct of the passions,
could bestow on it.
With regard to the deportment of the domestics, on which I have touched in the former preface, I
will beg leave to add a few words.The simplicity of their behaviour, almost tending to excite
smiles, which, at first, seems not consonant to the serious cast of the work, appeared to me not
only improper, but was marked designedly in that manner. My rule was nature. However grave,
important, or even melancholy, the sensations of the princes and heroes may be, they do not
stamp the same affections on their domestics: at least the latter do not, or should not be made to,
express their passions in the same dignified tone. In my humble opinion, the contrast between the
sublime of the one and the naivete of the other, sets the pathetic of the former in a stronger light.
The very impatience which a reader feels, while delayed, by the coarse pleasantries of vulgar
actors, from arriving at the knowledge of the important catastrophe he expects, perhaps
heightens, certainly proves that he has been artfully interested in, the depending event. But I had
higher authority than my own opinion for this conduct. The great master of nature,
SHAKESPEARE, was the model I copied. Let me ask, if his tragedies of Hamlet and Julius
9

Caeser would not lose a considerable share of their spirit and wonderful beauties, if the humour
of the gravediggers, the fooleries of Polonius, and the clumsy jests of the Roman citizens, were
omitted, or vested in heroics? Is not the eloquence of Antony, the nobler and affectedlyunaffected oration of Brutus, artificially exalted by the rude bursts of nature from the mouths of
their auditors? These touches remind one of the Grecian sculptor, who, to convey the idea of a
Colossus, within the dimensions of a seal, inserted a little boy measuring his thumb.
"No," says Voltaire, in his edition of Corneille, "this mixture of buffoonery and solemnity is
intolerable."Voltaire is a genius1 but not of Shakespeare's magnitude. Without recurring to
disputable authority, I appeal from Voltaire to himself. I shall not avail myself of his former
encomiums on our mighty poet; though the French critic has twice translated the same speech
in Hamlet, some years ago in admiration, latterly in derision; and I am sorry to find that his
judgment grows weaker when it ought to be farther matured. But I shall make use of his own
words, delivered on the general topic of the theatre, when he was neither thinking to recommend
or decry Shakespeare's practice; consequently, at a moment when Voltaire was impartial. In the
preface to his Enfant Prodigue, that exquisite piece, of which I declare my admiration, and
which, should I live twenty years longer, I trust I shall never attempt to ridicule, he has these
words, speaking of comedy (but equally applicable to tragedy, if tragedy is, as surely it ought to
be, a picture of human life; nor can I conceive why occassional pleasantry ought more to be
banished from the tragic scene than pathetic seriousness from the comic), "On y voit un mlange
de srieux et de plaisanterie, de comique et de touchant; souvent mme une seule
aventure produit tous ces contrastes. Rien n'est si commun qu'une maison dans laquelle un pre
gronde, une fille occupe de sa passion pleure; le fils se moque des deux, et quelques parents
prennent diffremment part la scne &c. Nous n'infrons pas de l que toute comdie doive
avoir des scnes de bouffonnerie et des scnes attendrissantes: il y a beaucoup de trs bonnes
pices o il ne rgne que de la gaiet; d'autres toutes srieuses; d'autres mlanges: d'autres o
l'attendrissement va jusques aux larmes: il ne faut donner l'exclusion aucun genre; et si on me
demandoit, quel genre est le meilleur, je rpondrois, celui qui est le mieux trait."2 Surely if
comedy may be toute srieuse, tragedy may now and then, soberly, be indulged in a smile. Who
shall proscribe it? Shall the critic, who, in self-defence, declares, that no kind ought to be
excluded from comedy, give laws to Shakespeare?
I am aware that the preface from whence I have quoted these passages does not stand in
Monsieur de Voltaire's name, but in that of his editor; yet who doubts that the editor and the
author were the same person? or where is the editor, who has so happily possessed himself of his
author's style, and brilliant ease of argument? These passages were indubitably the genuine
sentiments of that great writer. In his epistle to Maffei, prefixed to his Mrope, he delivers almost
the same opinion, though, I doubt, with a little irony. I will repeat his words, and then give my
reason for quoting them. After translating a passage in Maffei's Mrope, Monsieur de Voltaire
adds, "Tous ces traits sont nafs; tout y est convenable ceux que vous introduisez sur la
scne, et aux moeurs que vous leur donnez. Ces familiarits naturelles eussent t, ce que je
crois, bien reues dans Athnes; mais Paris et notre parterre veulent une autre espce de
simplicit."3 I doubt, I say, whether there is not a grain of sneer in this and other passages of that
epistle; yet the force of truth is not damaged by being tinged with ridicule. Maffei was to
represent a Grecian story: surely the Athenians were as competent judges of Grecian manners,
and of the propriety of introducing them, as the parterre of Paris. "On the contrary," says Voltaire
10

(and I cannot but admire his reasoning), "there were but ten thousand citizens at Athens and Paris
has near eight hundred thousand inhabitants, among whom one may reckon thirty thousand
judges of dramatic works."indeed!but allowing so numerous a tribunal, I believe this is the
only instance in which it was ever pretended that thirty thousand persons, living near two
thousand years after the era in question, were, upon the mere face of the poll, declared better
judges than the Grecians themselves, of what ought to be the manners of a tragedy written on a
Grecian story.
I will not enter into a discussion of the espce de simplicit, which the parterre of Paris demands,
nor of the shackles with which the thirty thousand judges have cramped their poetry, the chief
merit of which, as I gather from repeated passages in the New Commentary on Corneille, consists
in vaulting in spite of those fetters; a merit which, if true, would reduce poetry from the lofty
effort of imagination, to a puerile and most contemptible labourdifficiles nugae [hard
doggerel] with witness! I cannot, however, help mentioning a couplet, which, to my English ears,
always sounded as the flattest and most trifling instance of circumstantial propriety, but which
Voltaire, who has dealt so severely with nine parts in ten of Corneille's works, has singled out to
defend in Racine;
De son appartement cette porte est prochaine
Et cette autre conduit dans celui de la Reine.
IN ENGLISH
To Caeser's closet through this door you come.
And t'other leads to the Queen's drawing-room.
Unhappy Shakespeare! hadst thou made Rosencrantz inform his compeer, Guildenstern, of the
iconography of the palace of Copenhagen, instead of presenting us with a moral dialogue
between the Prince of Denmark and the gravedigger, the illuminated pit of Paris would have
been instructed a second time to adore thy talents.
The result of all I have said, is, to shelter my own daring under the canon of the brightest genius
this country, at least, has produced. I might have pleaded that, having created a new species of
romance, I was at liberty to lay down what rules I thought fit for the conduct of it: but I should be
more proud of having imitated, however faintly, weakly, and at a distance, so masterly a pattern,
than to enjoy the entire merit of invention, unless I could have marked my work with genius, as
well as with originality. Such as it is, the public have honoured it sufficiently, whatever rank their
suffrages allot to it.
Horace Walpole, 1766

Footnotes
1 The following remark is foreign to the present question, yet excusable in an Englishman, who is willing to think
that the severe criticisms of so masterly a writer as Voltaire on our immortal countryman, may have been the
effusions of wit and precipitation, rather than the result of judgment and attention. May not the critic's skill, in the
force and powers of our language, have been as incorrect and incompetent as his knowledge of our history? of the
latter, his own pen has dropped glaring evidence. In his preface to Thomas Corneille's Earl of Essex, Monsieur de

11

Voltaire allows that the truth of history has been grossly perverted in that piece. In excuse he pleads, that when
Corneille wrote, the noblesse of France were much unread in English story; but now, says the commentator, that
they study it, such misrepresentations would not be sufferedyet forgetting that the period of ignorance is lapsed,
and that it is not very necessary to instruct the knowing, he undertakes, from the overflowing of his own reading, to
give the nobility of his own country a detail of Queen Elizabeth's favouritesof whom, says he, Robert Dudley was
the first, and the Earl of Leicester the second. Could one have believed that it would be necessary to inform
Monsieur de Voltaire himself, that Robert Dudley and the Earl of Leicester were the same person?
2 "One sees there a mixture of the grave and the light, of the comic and the tragic; often even a single
adventure exhibits all these contrasts. Nothing is more common than a house in which the father scolds, a girl
occupied by her passions weeps, the son ridicules both, some relations take a differing part in the scene, etc. We do
not infer from this that every comedy ought to have scenes of buffoonery and of gravity. Now there is gaiety, now
seriousness, now a mixture. Then there are others in which tenderness moves one to tears. We must not exclude any
type, and if I were asked which is the best I would answer, 'the one which is best made.'"
3 "All of these characteristics are naive. Everything is convenient to those who introduce the scene and to the
customs that you give them. These natural familiarities would, I think, have been well received in Athens, but Paris
and our nation prefer another type of subtlety.

12

Ann Radcliffe
Ne Ward
Born July 9, 1764, London, England.
Died Feb. 7, 1823, London
In addition to Horace Walpole, she is the most representative of English Gothic
novelists.
one of the most famous early names of the Gothic tradition;
The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian, The Romance of the Forest.
notable for her ability to infuse scenes of terror and suspense with an aura of
romantic sensibility.
She crafted a brand of the so-called explained supernaturalism.
Life
Born in London on 9 July 1764, the year in which Horace Walpole published The Castle
of Otranto.
Little was or is known about Radcliffe's life. Ann Radcliffe lived a reclusive life. It was
reported that
she had gone mad as a result of her dreadful imagination
been confined to an asylum,
that she had been captured as a spy in Paris,
that she ate specific food before going to bed to stimulate nightmares for her
novels.
On several occasions she was falsely rumoured to be dead.
There is no explanation for why, at the age of 32, when she was one of the most
popular writers of her times, she stopped publishing. There is much speculation.
Radcliffe suddenly quit writing despite ongoing fame and significant financial reward;
her later reclusiveness, which may well be attributed to a nervous breakdown.
Influence
Radcliffes Gothic works were hugely popular in the 1790s (and beyond).
She is seen as the originator of the explained supernaturalism - ability to arouse
terror and curiosity in her readers by introducing events which are apparently
supernatural, but which are afterwards carefully explained by natural means, was widely
imitated but never surpassed.
13

Her blend of moralism, aesthetics, and drama became definitive for what was
often taken as a more genteel strain (marked by refinement), of Gothic fiction during the
Romantic period.
The most popular writer of her day and almost universally admired.
Contemporary critics called her the mighty enchantress and the Shakespeare of
romance-writers.
For Keats, she was Mother Radcliffe, and for Scott, the first poetess of romantic fiction.

Works
Radcliffe created the novel of suspense by combining
the Gothic romance of Walpole
the novel of sensibility, which focused on the proper, tender heroine and
emphasized the love interest.
In fact, for a writer classified as a "terror novelist," there is relatively little terror in her
novels in proportion to her descriptions of nature and her focus on the sensibilities of
her virtuous characters.

List of works

The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), her first novel, uses the
usurpation plot of Walpoles Otranto. Published anonymously.
A Sicilian Romance (1790).
The Romance of the Forest (1791), which made her reputation. A tale of 17 th
century France.
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), now her best-known work, which made
her the most popular novelist in England.
The Italian (1797)
Gaston de Blondeville (1826) it contains as a preface, her thoughts on the
sublime and Gothic fiction, "On the Supernatural in Poetry".

Innovator

in her use of the supernatural and landscape;

showed how suspense could be used to structure a novel.
14

she inaugurated a new type of Gothic novel the supernatural explained; the
mysterious, supernatural or horrific events which terrify readers are eventually
shown to have natural explanations.
There is little physical horror in Radcliffe's tales of terror, and elements that
seem to be supernatural are usually found to have some rather disappointing
natural explanation.

Many admirers:
Sir Walter Scott called her the first poetess of romantic fiction,
Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
the Continent, Balzac Victor Hugo, Dumas, Baudelaire.
Weaknesses noted by the critics:
habit of prosaic disillusionment, a tendency toward erroneous
geography and history
a tendency to insert in her novels little poems, attributed to characters.
her characterization is usually weak,
her historical insight is almost non-existent,
her stories abound in anachronisms and impossibilities.

Further reading:
- Jerrold E. Hogle (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, Cambridge University
Press 2002
- Catherine Spooner, Emma McEvvoy, The Routledge Companion to Gothic, Routledge,
London and New York, 2007
- Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature, New York: Facts on File, 2005.
- H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature.
- http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/radcliffe/index.html

15