This lecture will explore the life and works of Ann Radcliffe, best-selling Gothic author of the 1790s. Covering both her family background and her innovations in the form of the Gothic romance, the lecture will combine a look at Radcliffe’s literary milieu with an exploration of some of her best selling works, including The Mysteries of Udolpho’.

Angela Wright is Professor of Romantic Literature in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. With Michael Gamer, she is general editor of the Cambridge edition of the works of Ann Radcliffe for Cambridge University Press, as well as volume editor of The Mysteries of Udolpho. Further publications include the monographs Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764-1820: The Import of Terror (Cambridge UP, 2013), Mary Shelley (University of Wales Press, 2018) and the edited collections (with Dale Townshend) Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic (Cambridge UP, 2014), Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh UP, 2015) and Volumes One