The Mysteries of Udolpho (Oxford World's Classics)

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.6
EAN: 9780192825230
ISBN: 0192825232
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 736
Publication Date: September 10, 1998
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
A best-seller in its day and a potent influence on Sade, Poe, and other purveyors of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic horror, The Mysteries of Udolpho remains one of the most important works in the history of European fiction. After Emily St. Aubuert is imprisoned by her evil guardian, Count Montoni, in his gloomy medieval fortress in the Appenines, terror becomes the order of the day. With its dream-like plot and hallucinatory rendering of its characters' psychological states, The Mysteries of Udolpho is a fascinating challenge to contemporary readers.




Rating: - Unusually revolting sentimentality
"I believe that memory is responsible for nearly all these three-volume novels"
-Oscar Wilde

One thing I will say for this book is that it made Oscar Wilde's plays even more entertaining for me. I now know what he was talking about when he trashes books of "unusually revolting sentimentality." And what he says is very true. I am absolutely certain that Ann Radcliffe wrote this book as a sort of extended journal for her travels. At least half of it is devoted to scenery descriptions. ... Read More

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Rating: - Impossible to read
I wish I could have read this book. The type was so tiny I couldn't read any of it.

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Rating: - Ahead of her Time!
Ann Radcliffe was truly ahead of her time. She was rumored to be an inspiration for Jane Austen and other female novelists of the time. No one will ever measure up to Mrs Radcliffe who followed her dream against what society deemed "appropriate".

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Rating: - Like a long and complex dream ...
After having read the mere 176-page original gothic tale of 1764, Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto", I embarked on this 672-page equally-famous gothic fantasy by Ann Radcliffe, published thirty years later, and a best-selling literary phenomenon of its day.

The opening of Terry Castle's incisive introduction to the work notes that, "Perhaps no work in the history of English fiction has been more often caricatured." It is supposed to be "the greatest (or at least the most famous) of gothic ... Read More

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Rating: - The Mysteries of Udolpho: real and imagined
On one level, this novel defies categorisation. Yes, the Gothic web of mystery and intrigue is obvious. And so too are the beautiful descriptions of nature, the struggle between good and evil, the noble acts of heroism and the ignoble acts of greed.

Anne Radcliffe has taken all of these components and distilled an imaginative creation that still, some 213 years after publication, catches the imagination of the reader. If you do choose to read this glorious novel, make sure that you are prepared ... Read More

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