The Mysteries of Udolpho

First published in 1794, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho is one of the defining novels of the Gothic tradition, a work of suspense and psychological unease set amid the castles, mountains and ruined fortresses of southern Europe. Its heroine, Emily St Aubert, is drawn from the relative tranquillity of her childhood into a world of bereavement, confinement and uncertain dangers, culminating in her imprisonment at the forbidding castle of Udolpho under the authority of the sinister Montoni. As Emily confronts apparent supernatural mysteries and the darker realities of human power, Radcliffe sustains an atmosphere in which landscape, imagination and fear become inseparable.

Celebrated for its elaborate descriptions and carefully controlled suspense, the novel helped establish the Gothic romance as a major form of late eighteenth-century fiction. Radcliffe’s characteristic use of terror rather than explicit horror leaves much to the reader’s imagination, while her treatment of female vulnerability, independence and moral endurance gives the story a seriousness beyond its sensational plot. Its influence extended to generations of writers, including Jane Austen, whose Northanger Abbey affectionately parodies the conventions that Radcliffe helped make famous.

From the book

The eye of genius, or of taste, can alone penetrate the obscurity of the sublime.

— Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

On The Mysteries of Udolpho

In this contest of curiosity on one side, and invention on the other, Mrs. Radcliffe has certainly the advantage.

— The Critical Review, August 1794