The Romance of the Forest

Adeline, the protagonist of Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest, became a model for later Gothic heroines. Passionate, imaginative, and sensitive, in the course of the novel she travels rapidly through the forests and Gothic ruins of France, pursued by the villain de Montfort and perpetually threatened by what appear to be supernatural events. The publication of The Romance of the Forest in 1791 had a significant impact on Radcliffe’s career and on the rise of what would be known as the Gothic novel. The novel was widely praised upon publication and became a measure of quality against which all her future novels were gauged. Along with critical praise, The Romance of the Forest found an enthusiastic general audience and opened the new genre of Gothic Romance to a wider range of readers. The extensive historical appendices provide material on the novel’s contemporary reception, the Gothic novel, sensibility and sentiment, and the aesthetics of the sublime and picturesque.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Ann Radcliffe: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text The Romance of the Forest Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews 1. From The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature (April 1792) 2. From Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal (May 1792) 3. The Town and Country Magazine (June 1792) 4. The Scots Magazine (June 1792) 5. From English Review (November 1792) Appendix B: The Romance, the Novel, and the Gothic 1. From William Congreve, “The Preface to the Reader,” Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconciled: A Novel (1692) 2. From Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. 4 (31 March 1750) 3. From Horace Walpole, Preface, The Castle of Otranto, 2nd ed. (1765) 4. From Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance (1785) 5. Anonymous, “Terrorist Novel Writing,” The Spirit of the Public Journals (1797) Appendix C: The Aesthetics of the Sublime and the Picturesque 1. From Longinus, Dionysius Longinus on the Sublime (first century CE) 2. From John Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) 3. From Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) 4. From Anna Laetitia Aikin (later Barbauld) and John Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror,” Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (1773) 5. From William Gilpin, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape (1792) 6. From Ann Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (1826) Appendix D: Sensibility and the Sentimental 1. From Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) 2. From Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768) 3. Helen Maria Williams, “To Sensibility” (1786) 4. From Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary, a Fiction (1788) 5. From Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) Works Cited and Recommended Reading 

About the Author :
Shelley King is Professor Emerita of English at Queen’s University. John B. Pierce is Professor of English at Queen’s University. They are the editors of the Broadview Editions of Amelia Opie’s The Father and Daughter and The Dangers of Coquetry and of George McDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin and Other Fairy Tales.

Review :
“One of the masterpieces of Gothic fiction, The Romance of the Forest is superbly presented here. Shelley King and John Pierce introduce and annotate Radcliffe’s enthralling narrative in a meticulous yet also reader-friendly style, and their judicious selection of contextual material highlights the stakes of the work with admirable clarity.” — Thomas Keymer, Chancellor Henry N.R. Jackman University Professor of English, University of Toronto “The Romance of the Forest is my favorite Radcliffe novel to teach. I so wish I’d had this Broadview edition in hand the last time I taught it. The introduction is accessible yet challenging to undergraduates; it raises key questions about genre, the relation of sensibility to period theories of nerves and imagination, and Radcliffe’s engagement with landscape and the visual arts. These same topics link through to the supplemental backmatter. When the acknowledgements reference the editors’ students, I know I’m in good hands!” — Miriam L. Wallace, University of Illinois-Springfield “King and Pierce have made The Romance of the Forest available in a splendid new edition. Their comprehensive and incisive introduction and ample explanatory notes illuminate Radcliffe’s aesthetic concerns and subtle literary techniques, while carefully chosen appendices help us to understand how Gothic fiction in general and Radcliffe’s novels in particular were read by her contemporaries. Somewhat overshadowed by its spectacular successor, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Romance of the Forest here takes centre stage.” — Peter Sabor, McGill University