Radcliffe and the novel

The Gothic romance of Ann Radcliffe are still in print, but who reads them besides students taking courses in the early English novel or specialists in English literature?  Yet, Radcliffe has some claim to being the proto-inventor of the modern novel.

Austen read Radcliffe and laughed; her only Radcliffesque work was a parody. But Austen learned lessons about atmospherics, suspense, and setting from Radcliffe that played into her mature novels.

When Dostoevsky was too young to read, he would listen to his parents read aloud from Radcliffe’s novels, which left him “agape with ecstasy and terror.”   Joseph Frank suggests that “Dostoevsky would later take over . . . features of the Gothic technique and carry them to a peak of perfection that has never been surpassed.”

Needless to say, a writer who can inspire such diverse readers as Austen and Dostoevsky must be doing something remarkable.