![]() For example, the Critical Review in May 1794 noted that George Walker’s The Romance of the Cavern or, the History of Fitz-Henry and James (1792) was ‘copied from various popular novels. It immediately became a classic of ‘modern romance’, and was plundered by imitators. The publication of Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest the following year (1791) established the rage for the Gothic novel. Sir Walter Scott in 1824 recalled that when A Sicilian Romance appeared, it ‘attracted in no ordinary degree the attention of the public’, and it was on the basis of its poetic imagery and scenery ‘like those of a splendid oriental tale’ that Scott awarded Radcliffe the title of ‘the first poetess of romantic fiction’. The medieval trappings used by Walpole acted as a constraint upon creativity, but once writers jettisoned antiquarian authenticity in favour of vaguely late-medieval or Renaissance exoticism, they felt freer to follow their imagination. ![]() Very few Gothic novels were published before then, but a flood of them appeared afterwards. The publication of her novel A Siclian Romance in 1790 marks the real beginning of the full-fledged Gothic novel. ![]() ![]() If Horace Walpole was the father of the Gothic novel, Ann Radcliffe was certainly its mother. ![]()
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