In this video, Professor Angela Wright is at Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. Here she introduces the gothic genre and ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ by Ann Radcliffe, published in 1794.
‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ is set in France and Italy and secured the gothic reputation of its author as ‘the great enchantress’. However, Radcliffe never travelled to either France or Italy. Her sources of inspiration were closer to home in her native county of Derbyshire in England. The extracts we examine in the next steps illustrate the close links that Radcliffe forges between location and emotion.
Haddon Hall in Derbyshire is a country house that was visited and discussed frequently in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, in ‘Peak Scenery’ (1819) Ebenezer Rhodes comments upon the fact that our author Ann Radcliffe visited it and took copious notes for ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. One can see why, with the small chapel, turrets and amazing courtyard of Haddon Hall. The latter two characteristics in particular are foregrounded in Radcliffe’s description of the fictional castle of Udolpho, nestled in the Italian Apennine Mountains.
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