Novel
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe · 1794
Synopsis
In 1584, Émilie Saint-Aubert grows up in Gascony, on the banks of the Garonne. After her mother's death, she accompanies her sick father on a journey through the heights of the Pyrenees towards Languedoc; he dies on the way. Entrusted to her aunt, Mme Chéron, she sees her marry the Italian Montoni, who takes them to Venice and then to his castle of Udolpho, in the heart of the Apennines. There, Émilie hears music at night and lifts, in a room, a black veil; what it hides makes her faint. Her aunt refuses to sign the surrender of her property that Montoni demands of her.
Context
The publisher bought the book for five hundred pounds, a sum far higher than what was then paid, and this money allowed the author her only journey abroad, to Holland and Germany, in the very year of publication. She had never seen Italy, where she sets this novel, and drew its landscapes from travel narratives. She stopped writing three years later, at thirty-three, without giving a reason; she lived another twenty-six years in silence, and a last novel appeared after her death.
Who it is for
A very long novel, over nine hundred pages in paperback, with abundant descriptions of landscapes.
Prizes and reception
The most popular novel of its time, according to its present English publisher; Poe alludes to it in one of his tales.
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