In describing his proto-Gothic fiction, The Castle of Otranto (1764), as a translation, Horace Walpole was deliberately playing on national anxieties concerning the importation of war, fashion and literature from France in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War. In the last decade of the eighteenth century, as Britain went to war again with France, this time in the wake of revolution, the continuing connections between Gothic literature and France through the realms of translation, adaptation and unacknowledged borrowing led to strong suspicions of Gothic literature taking on a subversive role in diminishing British patriotism. Angela Wright explores the development of Gothic literature in Britain in the context of the fraught relationship between Britain and France, offering fresh perspectives on the works of Walpole, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis and their contemporaries.
• Offers new historical perspectives on the birth of the Gothic romance • Gives an in-depth account of the roles of translation and adaptation from French literature and the anxieties surrounding literary importation from France in this period • Provides a fresh reading of the work of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis along with less well-known authors
Contents
Introduction; 1. The mysterious author Horace Walpole; 2. The translator cloak'd: Sophia Lee, Clara Reeve and Charlotte Smith; 3. Versions of Gothic and terror; 4. The castle under threat: Ann Radcliffe's system and the romance of Europe; 5. 'The Order Disorder'd': French convents and British liberty; Conclusion: afterlives; Works cited.
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