Ann Radcliffe, <i>The Romance of the Forest</i>. Edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce

Shelley King and John B. Pierce’s edition of The Romance of the Forest (1791) brings Ann Radcliffe’s (1764–1823) novel to new life. The editors’ introduction is paired with well selected source documents contemporaneous with the influential Gothic romance. My favourite example (not included by King and Pierce) for the Romantic-era writers’ admiration for Radcliffe’s aesthetics is John Keats’s letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (1794–1852), dating from March 1818: “I intend to tip you the Damosel Radcliffe. I’ll cavern you, and grotto you, and water-fall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and tremendous-sound you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and solitude you.” (The Life and Letters of John Keats. Ed. Houghton, Lord. London: Edward Moxon, 1867, p. 89). Alongside Radcliffe’s inspiration for Keats’s joyful blending of powerful affects and natural forces, the letter indicates that Keats associated Radcliffe primarily with caverns, waterfalls, and woods. Such landscapes feature in The Romance of the Forest: Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry in ways that evoke “the convergence of the sublime aesthetic and psychoperceptual powers of sensibility” according to King and Pierce (38).