Editing Ann Radcliffe (section)

===Influence on later writers===
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| quote = I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and most of them with great pleasure. ''The Mysteries of Udolpho'', when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again;—I remember finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time.{{Sfn|Austen|1818|p=250}}
| source = &nbsp;—  Henry Tilney in ''[[Northanger Abbey]]'' (1817) by [[Jane Austen]]
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Nearly every writer of [[Gothic fiction]] can be said to be influenced by Radcliffe, who was almost synonymous with genre: during her lifetime, it was known as the "Radcliffe school" of fiction.{{sfn|Rogers|1994|pp=xix, xxxix}}<ref name=":7">{{Cite news |last=Ferguson |first=Donna |date=2024-10-06 |title=The Queen of Suspense: How Ann Radcliffe Inspired Dickens and Austen – Then Got Written Out of the Canon |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/06/the-queen-of-suspense-how-ann-radcliffe-inspired-dickens-and-austen-then-got-written-out-of-the-canon |access-date=2025-05-08 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> Some Gothic novels were written beginning in 1764, but it was Radcliffe's popularity which inspired large numbers of new entries in the genre.{{sfn|Rogers|1994|p=xix}} Contemporary critics called her a "mighty enchantress" and the [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] of romance-writers.<ref name="British Library" /> She was well-known for inspiring a large number of imitators, as well as [[Parody|parodies]].{{sfn|Rogers|1994|pp=xix, xxi}} The literary historian Michael Gamer credits Radcliffe with inventing a new art form, "the psychological novel of suspense and the supernatural".<ref name=":7" /> This echoes [[Walter Scott|Water Scott]]'s assessment in 1821 that Radcliffe belonged "among the favoured few who have been distinguished as the founders of a class, or school".{{Sfn|Scott|1906|p=319}}

Writers who followed in Radcliffe's lead include [[Harriet Lee (writer)|Harriet Lee]] (1757–1851) and [[Catherine Cuthbertson]] (1775–1842).<ref name="Baker" /> The writers [[Matthew Lewis (writer)|Matthew Lewis]] (1775–1818) and the [[Marquis de Sade]] (1740–1814) also took inspiration from her work but produced more intensely violent fiction. [[Jane Austen]] (1775–1817) parodied ''[[The Mysteries of Udolpho]]'' in ''[[Northanger Abbey]]'' (1817), and she defined her [[literary realism|realistic]] fiction as a contrast to Radcliffe's Gothic school.<ref name="Baker">William Baker, ''Critical Companion to Jane Austen: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work'' (Facts on File, 2007); see entry on Radcliffe, p. 578.</ref> Radcliffe also influenced [[Romanticism]], especially the Romantic writers [[Mary Shelley]] (1797–1851) and [[Lord Byron]] (1788–1824).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-03-08 |title=The Mysteries of Ann Radcliffe |url=https://www.mhra.org.uk/news/2023/03/08/the-mysteries-of-ann-radcliffe.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231206134035/https://www.mhra.org.uk/news/2023/03/08/the-mysteries-of-ann-radcliffe.html |archive-date=2023-12-06 |access-date=2025-05-08 |website=Modern Humanities Research Association |language=en}}</ref> The poets [[William Wordsworth]] and [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] wrote about her in their letters.{{Sfn|Rogers|1994|p=xx}}

In the early nineteenth century, Radcliffe particularly influenced Walter Scott (1771–1832), known for his [[Waverley novels|Waverley series]] of historical novels. Scott used romanticised historical settings and interspersed his work with poems in a similar manner to Radcliffe.{{Sfn|Kunitz|Haycraft|1952|p=427}} Later in the nineteenth century, the Gothic writers [[Charlotte Brontë|Charlotte]] (1816–1855) and [[Emily Brontë]] (1818–1848) continued Radcliffe's tradition with their novels ''[[Jane Eyre]], [[Villette (novel)|Villette]],'' and ''[[Wuthering Heights]].<ref name=":6" />'' She also influenced [[Charles Dickens]], [[William Makepeace Thackeray]], [[Edgar Allan Poe]], and [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]].{{sfn|Rogers|1994|p=xix}}

Radcliffe was admired by French authors including [[Honoré de Balzac]] (1799–1850), [[Victor Hugo]] (1802–1885), [[Alexandre Dumas]] (1802–1870), [[George Sand]] (1804-1876), and [[Charles Baudelaire]] (1821–1867).<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/radcliffe/index.html |title=Ann Radcliffe |website=Academic Brooklyn |access-date=5 May 2020}}</ref> [[Honoré de Balzac]]'s novel of the supernatural ''L'Héritière de Birague'' (1822) follows and parodies Radcliffe's style.<ref>Samuel Rogers, ''Balzac and the Novel'' (Octagon Books, 1969), p. 21.</ref> In 1849, [[Mary Russell Mitford]] described the French admiration for Radcliffe in a letter:

<blockquote>The only one whom they appear really to appreciate is Mrs. Radcliffe ... It is quite amusing to see how much a writer, wellnigh forgotten in England, is admired in France. I dare say, now, you never read a page of her novels, and yet such critics as [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve|Ste.-Beuve]], such poets as Victor Hugo, such novelists as Balzac and George Sand, to say nothing of a thousand inferior writers, talk of her in raptures. I will venture to say that she is quoted fifty times where Scott is quoted once.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Lee |first=Elizabeth |url=https://archive.org/details/correspondencewi00mitfuoft/page/134/mode/2up|title=Mary Russell Mitford, Correspondence with Charles Boner & John Ruskin |date=1914|page=134 |publisher= T. Fisher Unwin}}</ref></blockquote>

As a child, [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]] was deeply impressed by Radcliffe. In ''[[Winter Notes on Summer Impressions]]'' (1863) he writes, "I used to spend the long winter hours before bed listening (for I could not yet read), agape with ecstasy and terror, as my parents read aloud to me from the novels of Ann Radcliffe. Then I would rave deliriously about them in my sleep." A number of scholars have noted elements of Gothic literature in Dostoyevsky's novels,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Berry |first=Robert |title=Gothicism in Conrad and Dostoevsky|journal=Deep South | volume= 1 |date=May 1995 |url=http://www.otago.ac.nz/deepsouth/vol1no2/berry1_issue2.html |access-date=18 October 2014 |via= University of Otago}}</ref> and some have tried to show direct influence of Radcliffe's work.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bowers |first=Katherine |title=Dostoevsky's Gothic Blueprint: the Notebooks to The Idiot |url=http://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/content/dostoevskys-gothic-blueprint-notebooks-idiot |access-date=17 October 2014 |archive-date=22 October 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141022055700/http://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/content/dostoevskys-gothic-blueprint-notebooks-idiot |url-status=dead |website = Darwin College, Cambridge}}</ref>

Radcliffe's influence as a writer waned in the twentieth century.<ref name=":6" />{{Sfn|Rogers|1994|p=xxiii}} She was excluded from histories of the novel, and sometimes mocked as an unintentionally humorous writer.{{Sfn|Rogers|1994|p=xxiii}} Nonetheless, by the 1990s all of her novels were back in print,{{Sfn|Rogers|1994|p=xxiv}} and in 2024 ''The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe'' was announced – the first scholarly edition of her complete works, due to be published from 2025 to 2028.<ref name=":6" />