Gothic

The Mysteries of Udolpho

by Ann Radcliffe

An orphaned heiress is imprisoned in a crumbling Italian castle by a guardian with obvious designs on her fortune, and every apparently supernatural event in it turns out, eventually, to have a perfectly rational explanation. Radcliffe more or less invented the template every haunted castle since has been borrowing from. She insisted on rational endings on principle, which some readers find a relief and others find a betrayal.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 19 hr 30 min

Where to find it

The Austen Room

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #3268. In the public domain in the United States.