A first edition of one of the high points in Gothic literature, Radcliffe is credited with popularising what is now known as the Gothic genre, and her use of the explained supernatural was emulated by many authors.
‘The Mysteries of Udolpho is the perfected synthesis of the modern and medieval romances which Walpole had prescribed and had ostensibly attempted thirty years before the publication of Mrs. Radcliffe’s greatest work. All the elements of an emergent and more refined species of Gothic tale which could be discerned in The Romance of the Forest flourish in concert here. Amid a vast expanse of novel, the Radcliffean heroine (now called Emily) meanders leisurely through pastoral fields and Alpine Mountain reaches. Or she flees in terror (when she does not swoon) through spacious halls and endless corridors as obscure and devious as the inscrutable malignancy that rules over their darkness and revels in the awful ruin environing it’ (Murray).
Radcliffe’s popularity at the point at which this novel was published is attested to by the fact that she received £500 from the publishers for it, which was a great deal considering the average paid was £80, and her nearest contemporary competitor Frances Burney’s ‘highest figure, before 1797, was the £250’ (ODNB).
A very good though sophisticated copy, marbled boards and calf tips rubbed and worn, offsetting to the tips of all endpapers, hinges reinforced with archival tape, tape repair to the half title of the first volume, and middle gathering of the first volume a little word and frayed, presumably having come loose before being reinforced when the spine was re-backed. Short rip at the bottom right corner of D3 and D4 of volume four, not effecting the text. With the bookplate of Alice G. C. Clark to paste downs of all volumes. Otherwise internally clean.
