You are here

Home

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Please help us improve with this one minute survey (opens in a new tab)
View the text online:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/radcliffe/ann/udolpho/
Date Published: 16 July 2012
Writer:
Ann Radcliffe
In Collection(s): The Victorian Gothic
Keywords:
gothic, 18th century, Radcliffe
Source:
eBooks@Adelaide
Cite: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/radcliffe/ann/udolpho/ via http://writersinspire.org/content/mysteries-udolpho. Published on 16 July 2012. Accessed on 21 December 2024.

If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: The Mysteries of Udolpho (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/radcliffe/ann/udolpho/) by Ann Radcliffe, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Episode academic description

Often cited as the archetypal Gothic novel, 'The Mysteries of Udolpho' plays a prominent role in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, in which the impressionable young woman Catherine Morland, comes to see her friends and acquaintances as Gothic villains and victims after reading Radcliffe's novel. The text represents a typical Gothic romance, filled with incidents of physical and psychological terror; remote, crumbling castles; supernatural events; a scheming villain, and a persecuted heroine. Radcliffe also added extensive descriptions of exotic landscapes in the Pyrenees and Apennines. It is interesting to compare the Gothic elements present in this eighteenth-century novel with those used in Victorian fiction.