The Mysteries of Udolpho (6 page)

1764 The future Ann Radcliffe is born in London on Monday 9 July to William Ward, a haberdasher, and Ann Ward (née Oates), and is christened on 5 August in St Andrew's church, Holborn. She is related to distinguished professional men on both sides, including Dr Samuel Hallifax, Bishop of Gloucester, later of St Asaph, and the Dissenting Unitarian advocate of political reform Dr John Jebb.

1772–86 The Wards move to Bath. Ann is sent to live for long periods with her relatives, in particular her uncle by marriage Thomas Bentley, Unitarian business partner of the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood, whose shop in Bath William Ward manages for the next eighteen years. Ann may have attended Blacklands School while staying with Bentley at his Chelsea home in London.

1787 Ann marries William Radcliffe in the parish church of St Michael in Bath. William, an Oxford graduate and law student, does not take up a legal career but works for the radical
Gazetteer, and New Daily Advertiser
as a parliamentary reporter. Because he is often absent from home at night until late, Ann occupies herself by writing.

1789 Her first novel,
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne
, in one short volume, is published anonymously, and not widely reviewed. William Radcliffe's translation from the French of
The Natural History of East Tartary
is also published.

1790 Ann's second novel,
A Sicilian Romance
, in two volumes, published anonymously in early autumn and reissued in winter, receives favourable reviews. Her husband's
A Journey through Sweden
, a translation from the French, is published.

1791 In late January William becomes editor of the
Gazetteer
, which continues to view favourably the revolution in France. He arranges for Ann's poem ‘Song of a Spirit' to be published in the
Gazetteer
anonymously. Her third novel,
The Romance of the Forest, Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry
, in three volumes, is published anonymously towards the end of the year, receiving widespread acclaim from reviewers, and gaining
great popularity. Second and third editions in the following year bear Radcliffe's name on the title page.

1794
The Mysteries of Udolpho, a Romance; Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry
, in four volumes, is published on 8 May. The fourth edition of
The Romance of the Forest
appears on 9 May. The immense success of
Udolpho
in England and later on the Continent brings Radcliffe literary fame. She and her husband make a journey through Holland and Germany, despite the French invasion of the Netherlands, but a passport incident at Freiburg on the Swiss border causes their early return. In late September they begin a tour of the Lake District. On their return they buy a house at Melina Place, in London.

1795 Publication of
A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return down the Rhine: To Which are Added Observations during a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland
. William Radcliffe buys the
English Chronicle or Universal Evening Post
.

1796 Matthew Lewis's Gothic novel
The Monk
is published anonymously in March. A second edition, giving the author's name and his status as a Member of Parliament, appears in mid-September, and is denounced as indecent, blasphemous and subversive in the following year. Late in the year Radcliffe's
The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents
, in three volumes, is published by T. Cadell and W. Davies and well received.

1797 In August Radcliffe is attacked by implication in an anonymous satirical letter, ‘The Terrorist System of Novel Writing', written to the editor of the
Monthly Magazine
. Radcliffe's romances are also linked with
The Monk
and the work of her less decorous imitators. She makes a trip to the coast of Kent. Radcliffe now avoids public life and ceases to publish.

1798 Her father dies on 24 July. Trip to Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight in September.

1800 In early January the Radcliffes take up residence in China Terrace, Lambeth. Her mother dies on 14 March. Tour of the south coast in July.

1801 Tour of Southhampton, Lyndhurst, Lymington and the Isle of Wight.

1802 Visits Kenilworth Castle, Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace. Radcliffe writes much of
Gaston de Blondeville
in the winter of 1802–3, but puts it aside, ‘so disinclined had she become to publication' (Talfourd's ‘Memoir' – see 1826).

1810 Publication of the Revd Charles Apthorp Wheelwright's unauthorized
Poems
, which include an ‘Ode to Terror' and a footnote claiming that ‘Mrs Ann Radcliffe… is reported to have died under that species of mental derangement, known by the name of the horrors.'
^*

1812–15 Radcliffe retires to a small cottage in Windsor. In August 1815 she moves with her husband to a new home in Pimlico. Publication (editor anonymous) of
The Poems of Mrs Radcliffe
, a collection of the poems from
The Romance of the Forest
and
The Mysteries of Udolpho
.

1823 Radcliffe dies on 7 February from bronchial asthma and possibly pneumonia, after a high fever accompanied by delirium. Buried on 15 February in a vault in the burying ground at St George's church, Hanover Square.

1825 In November a claim is made in the
Monthly Review
that Radcliffe died ‘in a state of mental desolation not to be described'. The reviewer also questions ‘whether, for several of the last years of her life, her mind was in a situation to produce a work comparable in any degree to the Mysteries of Udolpho'.

1826 Posthumous publication in May of
Gaston de Blondeville, or the Court of Henry III Keeping Festival in Ardenne, a Romance
and
St Alban's Abbey, a Metrical Tale
in four volumes, prefaced with ‘Memoir of the Life and Writings of Mrs Radcliffe', by Thomas Noon Talfourd, a Unitarian barrister engaged by the publisher, Henry Colburn. Radcliffe's essay ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry', written as an introduction to
Gaston de Blondeville
, is published in Colborn's
New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal
, No. 16, pp. 145–52.

The Mysteries of Udolpho
has been continuously in print since its initial publication in London by G. G. and J. Robinson in May 1794, being printed twice in that year, with further editions in 1795, 1799, 1803, 1806 and 1809. It appeared again in Mrs (Aikin) Barbauld's collection The British Novelists in 1810, in a four-volume edition printed by Mason in 1823, and in another two-volume edition by C. S. Arnold in 1823 and yet another by S. Fisher in 1824. In that year a more expensive edition, ‘With Critical Remarks, and a Memoir of the Author, Embellished with Numerous Engravings on Wood', was also published by J. Limbird, this being reprinted with its many unfortunate typographical errors and emendations as Volume I of Limbird's The British Novelist collection in 1832 and 1833. Again in 1824, an edition supposedly edited by Sir Walter Scott, who also supplied a substantial ‘Prefatory Memoir of the Author', was published as Volume X of Ballantyne's Novelist's Library, by Ballantyne in Edinburgh and Hurst, Robinson & Co. in London.

During the rest of the nineteenth century
Udolpho
remained in steady demand, appearing in a variety of editions, some of them undated. Following translations into German in 1795, French in 1797 and Italian in 1816, it circulated widely on the Continent throughout the nineteenth century. Irish and American editions had dated from 1794 and 1795 respectively. In the twentieth century the work continued to maintain interest, with at least five editions appearing. In 1931 J. M. Dent published
Udolpho
in Everyman's Library, for which Ernest Rhys modernized to some extent Radcliffe's spelling and punctuation and Austin Freeman wrote an introduction. Bonamy Dobrée's 1966 edition for Oxford University Press, which makes very few emendations, has been reprinted many times – most recently in 1998, with a new introduction and notes by Terry Castle.

The text used here is that of the first edition of 1794; unlike her next romance,
The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents
(1796),
Udolpho
was not revised by either Radcliffe or the publisher for subsequent editions. For the sake of authenticity, original spellings – including eighteenth-century variants, such as ‘poinard' and ‘poniard' – have been retained, as have inconsistencies of hyphenation. A few obvious printer's errors, such as ‘hebade' for ‘he bade' and ‘frem'
for ‘from', have been silently corrected, and Radcliffe's misspellings of ‘Thompson' for the poet James Thomson and of ‘Sayer' (on one occasion) for the poet Frank Sayers have been emended. Her ‘heavy' punctuation, with its proliferation of commas and dashes, has been left virtually untouched, preserving the logical ordering of hierarchical relationships of units within her sentences. However, the jarring capitalization of ‘de' in ‘de Villeroi' has been returned to lower case wherever it appears in Volume II, as has the capitalization of ‘de' in ‘de Villefort' on occasion in Volumes III and IV; ‘D'Emery' has been changed to ‘d'Emery' in Volume I. Again for consistency, ‘St Claire' in Volume III has been silently corrected to the ‘St Clair' which appears elsewhere. Some passages originally in square brackets in Volume IV have instead been enclosed in parentheses, and asterisks and closing quotation marks have been transposed in references to Radcliffe's footnotes. The chapter numbers in Volume I have been emended after Chapter VII, to make them sequential, and that of Chapter III in Volume II has been corrected. A few loose stitches in the textual fabric, to adapt Sir Walter Scott's knitting metaphor, have also been attended to. One example occurs in Chapter VIII of Volume III, where ‘replied Ugo', which is obviously a mistake, has been emended to ‘replied the soldier'. Emendations of such minor incoherencies are tabulated below.

The Penguin Classics house style has been imposed throughout. Full stops after contractions such as ‘St' and after headings and source lines have been deleted. Unspaced em dashes have been changed to spaced en dashes, and other dashes have been halved in length. ‘CHAP' has been spelt out in chapter headings, and the opening words of chapters have been set in upper and lower case rather than capitals and small capitals. Single quotation marks have been used throughout, with double quotation marks for quotations within dialogue, and closing quotation marks have not been used at the end of a paragraph when dialogue continues at the start of the next paragraph.

Radcliffe's inconsistent practice in identifying the source of quotations which occur as epigraphs to chapters and in the text has been addressed by citing both the name of the author and the title of the work, the added material being placed in square brackets. The titles of the works quoted have been changed to upper-and-lower-case italics. Omission of whole lines in quoted verse has been indicated by a line of spaced full stops, rather than by the long rule or rules used by Radcliffe. Fuller details of the sources are given in end-notes, as are details of those quotations for which Radcliffe does not herself give a source. Notes have also been provided on matters of textual interest as well as on passages which assume knowledge of eighteenth-century society, literature, customs, taste and manners.

PENGUIN TEXT
                         1794
EDITION

[I/139]         Montoni was not at home        Montoni was at home

[II/227]        hall. Says Carlo                       hall, says Carlo

[III/366]       lest it should not be he            lest it should be he

[III/404]       replied the soldier                   replied Ugo

[III/442]       my late lord, the Marquis       my late lord, the Count

[IV/529]       Henri and the Count               Henri and the servant

THE

MYSTERIES
OF
UDOLPHO,

A

ROMANCE;

INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PIECES OF POETRY

BY

ANN RADCLIFFE,

AUTHOR OF THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST, ETC.

IN FOUR VOLUMES
.

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.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER - ROW.

1794.