The Romance of the Forest

Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest, " first published in 1791, is the epitome of the Gothic novel: a beautiful, orphaned heiress, a dashing hero, a dissolute, aristocratic villain, and a ruined abbey deep in a great forest are combined by the author in a tale of suspense where danger lurks behind every secret trap-door. Reprinted four times between 1791 and 1795 and satirised as representative of the Gothic genre by Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey, " Radcliffe's tense masterpiece, in which the heroine is afraid even to look in the mirror for fear of what she might see behind her, established her reputation as a writer.