Author: Radcliffe, Ann
Biography:
RADCLIFFE, Ann (1764-1823: ODNB)
She was born in London, the only child of Ann (Oates) and William Ward, a haberdasher. They moved to Bath in 1772 after his business failed; there he managed a showroom for the Wedgewood pottery business in which Thomas Bentley, a relative by marriage, was a partner. In Bath in 1787 Ann Ward married William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate who became a journalist and parliamentary reporter in London. They had no children but he encouraged her literary interests. Radcliffe published five prose romances in her lifetime, including The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian (a sixth, Gaston de Blondeville, appeared after her death) and she became the best-known, best-paid, and most influential writer of Gothic fiction of the 1790s. Poems embedded in the narratives allow characters to express strong feelings, but prose fiction is excluded from this bibliography, so Radcliffe owes her place here to a few unauthorized collections of extracts published separately as volumes of verse, and to the posthumous work that isolates some poetry. Radcliffe gave up Gothic fiction at the peak of her career for unknown reasons. The memoir by her husband (1826) suggests natural reticence and inheritances that removed the financial incentive but later biographers have questioned his motives. She died in London, probably of a bronchial infection. Her husband married again in 1826 and died in France in 1830. (ODNB 17 Jul. 2020) HJ
Other Names:
- Mrs. Ann Radcliffe
- Mrs. Radcliffe
- Anne Radcliffe