Tea at Trianon: Ann Radcliffe, Queen of Gothic Novels

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 17, 2014

Ann Radcliffe, Queen of Gothic Novels

From The Guardian:

Radcliffe, whose novel The Mysteries of Udolpho was affectionately lampooned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, is known as a pioneer of gothic fiction and was one of the most popular writers of her time; Walter Scott called her a "mighty enchantress". Hardly anything is known about her personal life, however: the Edinburgh Review noted after her death in 1823 that she "never appeared in public, nor mingled in private society, but kept herself apart, like the sweet bird that sings its solitary notes, shrouded and unseen".

Rumours sprung up at the time that her terrifying writing had driven her into a lunatic asylum, and that she ate raw meat before bed to summon up the nightmares that would fuel her imagination. Christina Rossetti later abandoned a biography of the author because there was too little information available about her life.

Only two manuscripts in the world were thought to exist in her hand, one of those only a signature – until Greg Buzwell, a curator at the British Library, came across a letter to Radcliffe's mother-in-law believed to have been written by the author at the end of the 18th century, inside a volume of miscellaneous letters. (Read more.)