Romance of the Forest »

University of Sheffield

The Romance of the Forest evokes a world drenched in both horror and natural splendor, beset with abductions and imprisonments, and centered upon the frequently terrified but still resourceful and determined heroine Adeline. The Gothic Romance stands perfectly poised between the eighteenth century and the oncoming Age of Romanticism, offering moral lessons, pure thrills, and a new kind of fiction with more prominence given to atmospheric setting and sustained suspense than ever before.

About the Author
Ann Radcliffe became the best-selling English writer of the 1790s when her husband, publisher of the English Chronicle, encouraged her to write for the commercial market. Praised by Walter Scott and favorably compared to Shakespeare, Radcliffe wrote such successes as The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho. At the height of her fame she ceased to publish, though she lived until 1823.