JULIA

Radcliffe, Anne [Ann Radcliffe]

Edité par A. Cl. Forget, Paris, 1797

First edition in French of A SICILIAN ROMANCE, the gothic novelist's second book - and the beginning of her multinational fame. Radcliffe did not invent the gothic novel, but she was the one who legitimized it. One contemporary reviewer called her 1794 novel MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO "the most interesting novel in the English language." Others wrote that Radcliffe was an "enchantress," a "genius," and "unrivalled." (Byron was so taken with Radcliffe's description of Venice that he plagiarized it in CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.) Critics associated her with Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare. Yet today most readers first come across her best-known novel, UDOLPHO, in the pages of Austen's book NORTHANGER ABBEY. Austen's novel is an extended celebration of the joys of reading, with UDOLPHO as its primary example. "While I have UDOLPHO to read," her heroine says, "I feel as if nobody could make me miserable." The hero, Henry Tilney, adds that "when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days - my hair standing on end the whole time." When it was first published in London in 1790, A SICILIAN ROMANCE "attracted in no ordinary degree the attention of the public" according to Walter Scott, one of her biggest admirers, and led him to name her "the first poetess of romantic fiction." The work also "had an immediate impact even in France, where it influenced Marsollier's CAMILLE [.] an opera which Matthew Gregory Lewis saw in September 1791, and which was to influence the scene of Antonia in the crypt in his novel THE MONK five years later" (Norton, 59). Much like their later enthusiastic embrace of Edgar Allan Poe, French critics and readers held a special appreciation for Radcliffe, whom they hailed as "Shakespearean" (Norton, 72). 12mo, 6.5'' x 4''. Contemporary quarter calf, marbled paper boards. Marbled endpapers, speckled edges. Engraved frontispiece. With songs at rear. [2], vi, 230, 16. Notable rubbing to boards, with small area to front board largely worn away. Only a bit of foxing to text. N° de réf. du vendeur 53592

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : JULIA
Éditeur : A. Cl. Forget, Paris
Date d'édition : 1797
Reliure : Couverture rigide
Etat : Very good.
Edition : First Edition.