The First Poetess of Romantic Fiction

Ann Ward was born in London on July 9, 1764, about 7 years before Walter Scott.  Like Scott, her first novel - The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) - was published anonymously.  This novel was published in the year following her marriage to journalist William Radcliffe.

The title of today’s post is a comment on Ann Radcliffe made by Walter Scott.  Radcliffe was influential in her time, and according to Scott’s journal entry of February 3^rd, 1826, the author consciously dealt with that influence:

‘…James Ballantyne is severely critical on what he calls imitations of Mrs.

Radcliffe in Woodstock. Many will think with him, yet I am of opinion

he is quite wrong, or, as friend J. F[errier] says, vrong. In the

first place, I am to look on the mere fact of another author having

treated a subject happily as a bird looks on a potato-bogle which scares

it away from a field otherwise as free to its depredations as any one's

else! In 2d place, I have taken a wide difference: my object is not to

excite fear of supernatural tilings in my reader, but to show the effect

of such fear upon the agents in the story--one a man of sense and

firmness--one a man unhinged by remorse--one a stupid uninquiring

clown--one a learned and worthy, but superstitious divine. In the third

place, the book turns on this hinge, and cannot want it. But I will try

to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti's exception into the

prefatory matter…’