, RADCLIFFE, ANN, the most popular English novelist at the close of the last century, was b. in London, July 9, 1764. She was of respectable parents named Ward. In her 23d year she married "Mr. William Radcliffe, a student of law, but who became proprie tor and editor of a weekly newspaper, the English chronicle. Mrs. Radcliffe lived much in retirement. known only to a few friends, by whom she was warmly esteemed. Her works are—The Castles of AMU'', and Dunbayne (1789); A Sicilian Romance (1790); The Romance of the Forest (1791); i he lfysteriesof Udolpho (1794); A Journey through Holland, etc. (1794); and The Italian (1797). Mrs. Radcliffe's popularity was constantly, increasing down to the date of her latest work, when, in her 33d year, "like an actress in full pos session of her applauded powers," as Scott has remarked, "she chose to retreat from the stage in the full blaze of her fame." She lived 26 years afterward, dying in 1823. For the copyright of her Mysteries of Udolpho, her best work, she received £500; and for that of The Italian, £800. These sums were at the time considered excessive, and were per Imps the largest ever given iu this country for works of fiction until the great era of the Waverlev novels. A sixth romance, entitled Gaston de and a collection
of Poets Radcliffe, were published after her death.
As a novelist, Mrs. Radcliffe is pre-eminent for vivid poetical imagination. and for great power of romantic narrative and description. Her paintings of external nature, and of scenes of feudal pomp, gloom, terror, or mystery, are quite unrivaled in modern romance. In the art of awakening curiosity and enchaining attention, she is no less skillful. She keeps her readers in a state of breathless awe and suspense; but in the end, when she resolves all the seemingly supernatural agencies and horrors of her tales into simple natural causes, she unquestionably fails, for her explanations are inadequate to account for the effects produced. She has also little variety of character or striking individual portraits, and no wit or humor. Hence her works, with all their gorgeous pictures and potent spells, seldom interest beyond the period of youth.