Popularity of Ann Radcliffe continued through the nineteenth century; for Keats, she was Mother Radcliffe, and for Scott, the first poetess of romantic fiction. Radcliffe created the novel of suspense by combining the Gothic romance of Walpole with the novel of sensibility, which focused on the proper, tender heroine and emphasized the love interest. In all her novels, "a beautiful and solitary girl is persecuted in picturesque surroundings, and, after many fluctuations of fortune, during which she seems again and again on the point of reaching safety, only to be thrust back into the midst of perils, is restored to her friends and marries the man of her choice" (J.M.S. Tompkins). Contents: THE NOVELS THE CASTLES OF ATHLIN AND DUNBAYNE: A HIGHLAND STORY A SICILIAN ROMANCE THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST: INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PIECES OF POETRY THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO THE ITALIAN GASTON DE BLONDEVILLE THE POETRY ST. ALBAN'S ABBEY: WITH SOME POETICAL PIECES MISCELLANEOUS POEMS THE NON-FICTION JOURNEY MADE IN THE SUMMER OF 1794 THE FEMALE ADVOCATE

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Ann Radcliffe (9 July 1764 7 February 1823) was an English author and a pioneer of Gothic fiction. Her technique of explaining apparently supernatural elements in her novels has been credited with gaining Gothic fiction respectability in the 1790s.