Ann Radcliffe

The only child of William Ward and Ann Oates, Ann Radcliffe was born in Holborn, London, in 1764. Her father was a successful businessman who eventually moved the family to Bath. At age 23, Radcliff married William Radcliffe, a journalist who went to Oxford; and in 1789, at age 25, she anonymously published her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. Radcliffe didn’t begin putting her real name on her novels until the second edition of her third novel, The Romance of the Forest, which both sold better and attracted more praise than either of her previous novels. This cleared the way for The Mysteries of Udolpho, which became a massive success shortly after its publication and remains perhaps her best-known novel. The strong sales of Radcliffe’s novels allowed her husband to quit his job so that he and Radcliffe could travel the world, and she published a travelogue about this time. Although rumors spread that Radcliffe retired from writing in her final years because she went insane, in fact, she lived an active social life and continued to write a novel (Gaston de Blondeville) that was published after her death. She died of a chest infection in 1823, and it took many years for a scholarly biography of her to emerge, adding to the popular idea that her life was mysterious.