The Mysteries of Udolpho: The Annotated Edition — Ann Radcliffe’s Founding Gothic Romance, with Introduction, Notes & Reader’s Guide

The novel that invented the Gothic — and the book Jane Austen’s heroine couldn’t put down.

Orphaned Emily St. Aubert is carried off to a brooding castle in the Apennines, where a scheming guardian, a veiled horror, and secrets behind every locked door test her reason and her courage. First published in 1794, The Mysteries of Udolpho is the founding text of Gothic romance — the book Catherine Morland devours in Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and the ancestor of every haunted castle and dark-academia thriller since.

This Annotated Edition includes the complete novel, an original introduction on Radcliffe and the birth of the Gothic, notes on the 18th-century vocabulary and the famous Austen connection, and a reader’s guide for a long and rewarding classic.