TALK: Lifting the Veil on Ann Radcliffe's 'The Mysteries of Udolpho'

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) redefined Gothic fiction with her novels that used the sublime – the quality of unmeasurable greatness, awe-inspiring and terrifying – to instil terror and dread in her readers. While she only published five books during her lifetime, she was the highest paid novelist of the 1790s and her writings influenced many others, from Jane Austen to the Marquis de Sade.

This talk takes place as Angela Wright is working towards completing a new edition of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and will focus firstly upon the particular significance of Radcliffe's fourth romance, and what makes it distinctive in terms of its publication history, its foregrounding of Radcliffe's own original poetry, and the ways in which it was read and received. Angela will then move on to discuss its impact upon subsequent authors and titles, some of which are held in the University of Aberdeen's Special Collections.

Angela Wright is Professor of Romantic Literature at the University of Sheffield, and author and co-editor of a number of works upon the Gothic, including Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764-1820: The Import of Terror (Cambridge UP), Mary Shelley (UWP), and Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic (with Dale Townshend, for CUP), Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (with Dale Townshend for EUP) and Volumes One and Two of the award-winning Cambridge History of the Gothic (with Dale Townshend for CUP). With Professor Michael Gamer, she is general co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge edition of the complete works of Ann Radcliffe, for which she is editing The Mysteries of Udolpho. Angela is also Project Lead for the AHRC-sponsored project ‘Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now’.

Attendees are invited to come along to the gallery before the talk for Gothic mocktails and a final look around the Fear and Fascination exhibition which closes on 7 December 2025 after a hugely successful run. Join us for a Vampire Mocktail!

FREE Parking at the Sir Duncan Rice Library is available to event attendees from 4pm.

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Host or Publisher University of Aberdeen Museums, University of Aberdeen