It’s the birthday of the great Gothic author Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), best known for her novels The Romance of the Forest (1791) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which last novel made her insanely popular and led Jane Austen to write a brilliant satire, Northanger Abbey (written in 1803, published in 1817).

Ann Ward Radcliffe was born in London and died in London and traveled very little in between, in spite of sending her characters to dark Gothic castles in France and Italy and the Pyrenees and the Apennines, which circumstance led to wild anachronisms and vast historical inaccuracies. This worked out fine because neither Radcliffe nor her readers had any interest in historical accuracy. Radcliffe married journalist William Radcliffe at the age of 23, and they had a happy marriage with no children. (Make of that what you will.) William encouraged Radcliffe’s writing, and Radcliffe wrote. She was exceptionally good at invoking terror and sustaining long suspenseful scenes, and she made big buttery handfuls of money from The Mysteries of Udolpho and her next novel, The Italian (1797), perhaps her greatest work. After that, Radcliffe, having all that money, mostly stopped writing fiction. Her final novel, Gaston de Blondeville, was published posthumously in 1826.

Relatively little is known about Radcliffe’s life, which is very handy because I don’t have time today to work through someone with five husbands and convoluted political involvements. Suffice it to say that Radcliffe was the most popular author of her time and beloved by such literary greats as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, and even Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Wildest anachronism found in The Romance of the Forest: the beautiful young heroine, Adeline, realizing she is in love with Theodore, makes note of the time on her digital watch. It’s like Radcliffe wasn’t even trying.

(Jk.)

Have a fabulous Tuesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.