Editing Ann Radcliffe (section)

=== Biographies ===
[[File:Ann Radcliffe.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|Imagined portrait of Ann Radcliffe, published after her death in J.S. Pratt's 1853 edition of ''[[The Romance of the Forest]]'']]

Several biographies have been written about Radcliffe, but all face the same problems of limited source material.{{Sfn|Norton|1999|p=VII}} Radcliffe's journals are no longer extant, though a few excerpts were published shortly after her death.{{sfn|Rogers|1996|p=2}} Only three documents directly related to Radcliffe could be located by the [[Bibliography|bibliographer]] [[Deborah D. Rogers]] in 1996: her forty-two page [[commonplace book]], a note to someone named Miss Williamson,{{Efn|This note says only, "My Dear Miss Williamson, The carriage is at door, and I have only time to say, that the books are arrived, and that we shall have great pleasure in seeing you on Wednesday. Pray come early, that we may have a ride. Sincerely Yours, A. Radcliffe{{sfn|Rogers|1996|p=20}}}} and her original contract for ''Udolpho''.{{sfn|Rogers|1996|pp=1-2}} Since then, a letter to her mother-in-law has also been found.{{Sfn|Flood|2014}}{{Sfn|Louca-Richards|2020}}

[[Walter Scott]] published a brief "Prefatory memoir" about Radcliffe in 1824, as part of ''The Novels of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe'' in the Ballantyne Novelist's Library series.{{Sfn|Norton|1999|p=4}} The best-known biography of Radcliffe was published as a preface to some of her posthumous works in 1826.{{sfn|Rogers|1996|p=2}} It was written by [[Thomas Noon Talfourd]], using extracts from Racdliffe's journals and information provided by her husband.{{sfn|Rogers|1996|p=2}} Early biographical accounts of Radcliffe typically emphasised her illustrious distant relatives over her close relatives, who were in [[trade]], as part of cultivating a genteel and ladylike reputation for her.{{Sfn|Norton|1999|p=13}} [[Christina Rossetti]] attempted to write a biography of Radcliffe in 1883, but abandoned it for lack of information.{{Sfn|Norton|1999|p=VII}}

Two full-length biographies were published in the mid twentieth century: Aline Grant's ''Ann Radcliffe: A Biography'' (1951) and Pierre Arnaud's ''Ann Radcliffe et le fantisque: essai de psychobiographie'' (1976).{{Sfn|Norton|1999|p=VII}} Rictor Norton, author of ''Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe'' (1999), argues that these years were "dominated by interpretation rather than scholarship" and that information (specifically on her rumoured madness) was repeated rather than traced to a reliable source.{{Sfn|Norton|1999|p=VII}} Deborah D. Rogers included a twenty-page summary of Radcliffe's life in ''Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography'' (1996), combining information from Talfourd with Radcliffe's commonplace book.{{sfn|Rogers|1996|pp=1-20}} Norton's 1999 biography, more than ten times the length, incorporates archival materials related to Radcliffe's many relatives, as well as public discussion of her reputation, to expand on the context for her life.{{Sfn|Norton|1999}}