Quotes from book
The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe, appeared in four volumes on 8 May 1794 from G. G. and J. Robinson of London, which paid her £500 for the manuscript. Her fourth and most popular novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho tells of Emily St. Aubert, who suffers, among other misadventures, the death of her mother and father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle and machinations of an Italian brigand. Often cited as the archetypal Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho and Radcliffe's novel The Romance of the Forest play a prominent role in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, where an impressionable young woman reader comes to see her friends and acquaintances as Gothic villains and victims, with amusing results.


Ann Radcliffe photo
Ann Radcliffe photo

“Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,
And as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed.”

Motto to the novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, presumed to be Radcliffe's own composition, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed

Ann Radcliffe photo

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