The Mysteries of Udolpho (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) »

When she published The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Ward Radcliffe (1764-1823) was just shy of her thirtieth birthday. She had begun writing shortly after her marriage to journalist William Radcliffe in order to pass the time when her husband worked late, and her hobby quickly became a profitable venture. After she wrote The Italian (1797), Radcliffe mysteriously stopped publishing her works, leading to erroneous reports that she had died or become insane. She died peacefully in her bed of complications from spasmodic asthma at the age of 58.

The Mysteries of Udolpho has been thrilling readers for over two hundred years and holds a critically important place in the history of gothic literature, the rise of romanticism, and the development of the modern detective novel. The novel has something for everyone: Although Radcliffe subtitled The Mysteries of Udolpho "a romance," this gothic thriller is also in part a travelogue, a sentimental novel, a novel of manners, a female Bildungsroman, and a mystery--it even contains a selection of poems. While readers will enjoy wondering whether heroine Emily St. Aubert will ever escape the clutches of her step-uncle Montoni to reunite with her stalwart lover Valancourt, they will also ponder the eerie music, odd family resemblances, unexpected corpses, and sinister disappearances that haunt Emily--and whose mysteries Emily seeks to solve.