# The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

> The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, first published 1794: publication record, synopsis, a verified quotation and sources.

Canonical page: https://lineageofshadows.com/works/mysteries-of-udolpho/

Title: The Mysteries of Udolpho, a Romance; Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry
Author: Ann Radcliffe
Form: Novel
First appearance: 1794 (timeline year 1794)
Themes: The sublime, Women in peril, The house, The supernatural

## Publication record

- Volume, 1794: G. G. and J. Robinson, London (4 vols). Four volumes, each of nearly 400 pages; the Robinsons paid Radcliffe 500 pounds for the manuscript. Exact day not settled (see disputes). [1, 2]

## Synopsis

In 1584, on the banks of the Garonne in Gascony, Emily St. Aubert loses her mother and then her father and passes to the care of an aunt. The aunt marries Montoni, an Italian nobleman, who takes the women to Venice and then to his fortress of Udolpho high in the Apennines, where he presses them to sign away their property. Cut off among his armed followers, Emily searches the galleries for the meaning of a veiled picture, a locked chamber, and voices in the night. Her loyalty to the young Valancourt, left behind in France, is the one fixed point. Radcliffe sends her heroine through mountain storms and candlelit corridors.

## Setting

The year 1584 and after. Places: Gascony; the Pyrenees; Languedoc; Venice; the Apennines [3]

## From the text

> Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all, who dared to invade its solitary reign.

Volume II, Chapter V. Project Gutenberg ebook #3268: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3268 (Gutenberg's text, four volumes; Emily's first sight of the castle at dusk)

## Facts

- G. G. and J. Robinson of Paternoster Row published the novel in four volumes in 1794 and paid Radcliffe 500 pounds for it, well above the usual price for a novel at the time. [1, 2]
- Matthew Lewis began reading Udolpho before leaving for The Hague in 1794 and finished it just after arriving; the Dictionary of National Biography says he was induced to go on with The Monk by his interest in it, though Montague Summers cites a letter of 18 May 1794 to Lewis's mother for his dislike of its landscape description. [4, 5]

## Threads in

- In the tradition of: [The Castle of Otranto](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/castle-of-otranto/): The Dictionary of National Biography's entry on Lewis calls Radcliffe's romances a form of literature of which Walpole's Castle of Otranto 'set the first example'; a genre-level link, not a documented borrowing. [5]

## Threads out

- Its tradition continues in: [Jane Eyre](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/jane-eyre/). In the Radcliffean tradition rather than a documented borrowing: an Oxford lecture series places Thornfield's guilty secret in the Victorian Gothic revival that was 'often modelled on the Medieval Gothic of Ann Radcliffe and Walter Scott'; it does not name Udolpho. [6]
- Its tradition continues in: [Melmoth the Wanderer](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/melmoth-the-wanderer/). In the Radcliffean tradition rather than a link to Udolpho by title: Maturin's Preface reports a friend's objection that the Spaniard's Tale revives the horrors of 'Radcliffe-Romance', and defends it as drawing convent misery from petty daily torments. [7]
- Leads to: [The Monk](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/the-monk/). The Dictionary of National Biography says Lewis was induced to go on with The Monk by his interest in Udolpho, and Summers reports he read it just before and after reaching The Hague in 1794, though he found its landscape passages dull. [5, 4]
- Its tradition continues in: [The Woman in White](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/the-woman-in-white/). In the Radcliffean tradition rather than a documented borrowing: Winifred Hughes, as summarised by the Victorian Web, ties the sensation fiction that The Woman in White initiated to a continued taste for the Gothic novel, naming 'the goosebump gothicism of Ann Radcliffe'. [8]
- Leads to: [The Turn of the Screw](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/turn-of-the-screw/). The governess explicitly asks whether she has stumbled on 'a mystery of Udolpho' at Bly (Chapter IV), marking the story's debt to the Radcliffean secret-in-the-house plot. [9]

## Notes on dates and attribution

- Publication day: Wikipedia (citing the Norton edition) gives 8 May 1794; Montague Summers (quoted on Encyclopedia.com) says it 'appeared at the end of April, 1794'. No authoritative source settles it, so only 1794 is shown.
- Edition: the Otago library calls its volume the first edition, while the Tufts exhibit describes its set as the second edition (both 1794); the 500 pounds payment and four volumes agree in both.

## Sources

1. The Printing of The Mysteries of Udolpho (online exhibit). Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives. https://omeka.library.tufts.edu/exhibits/show/radcliffe-udolpho/printing (accessed 2026-10-09)
2. The Mysteries of Udolpho, first edition vol. 1 (catalogue record). University of Otago Library (OUR Heritage). https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/11290 (accessed 2026-10-09)
3. The Mysteries of Udolpho (Gutenberg ebook 3268). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3268/pg3268.txt (accessed 2026-10-09)
4. Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818) (includes Montague Summers, The Gothic Quest, extracts; quotes Lewis's letters of 18 May and 23 September 1794). Encyclopedia.com (Gale / Thomson Gale). https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/lewis-matthew-gregory-1775-1818 (accessed 2026-10-09)
5. Lewis, Matthew Gregory, Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900. Dictionary of National Biography, via Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Lewis,_Matthew_Gregory (accessed 2026-10-09)
6. Julian Thompson, 'Victorian Gothic: An Introduction', Great Writers Inspire (University of Oxford). University of Oxford. http://writersinspire.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/taxonomy/term/578 (accessed 2026-10-09)
7. Melmoth the Wanderer, Vol. 1 (Gutenberg ebook 53685; 1820 Constable/Hurst Robinson title page, Maturin's Preface dated Dublin 31 August 1820). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53685/pg53685.txt (accessed 2026-10-09)
8. The Victorian Sensation Novel, 1860-1880 (Philip V. Allingham; cites Winifred Hughes on the Gothic roots of sensation fiction). The Victorian Web. https://victorianweb.org/genre/sensation.html (accessed 2026-10-09)
9. The Turn of the Screw (Project Gutenberg ebook #209). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/209 (accessed 2026-10-09)