FOUNTAINVILLE FOREST
Boaden's dramatic adaptation of THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST, produced mere months before Radcliffe's blockbuster THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, and timed with it to turn Radcliffe into a massive literary celebrity.
Very good.
Price: $1,000.00
FOUNTAINVILLE FOREST
"Thus Ann Radcliffe competed with Shakespeare for the favour of the public." — Rictor Norton
Radcliffe did not invent the gothic novel, but she was the one who turned it into the first major fad of the genre. One contemporary reviewer called MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO "the most interesting novel in the English language." Others wrote that Radcliffe was an "enchantress," a "genius," and "unrivalled." (Byron was so taken with Radcliffe's description of Venice that he plagiarized it in CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.) Critics associated her with Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare. Yet today most readers first come across her best-known novel, UDOLPHO, in the pages of Austen's book NORTHANGER ABBEY. Austen's novel is an extended celebration of the joys of reading, with UDOLPHO as its primary example. "While I have UDOLPHO to read," her heroine says, "I feel as if nobody could make me miserable."
Before UDOLPHO, it was Radcliffe's third novel, THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST (1791), that decisively established the author's fame. "It has been the fashionable novel here," noted the (soon to be) author Maria Edgeworth. "[e]verybody read and talked of it." It achieved a level of popularity that gave Radcliffe the confidence to publish under her own name, beginning with the novel's second edition that followed quickly after the first. Then, in 1794, the "near-simultaneous publication of MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, FOUNTAINVILLE FOREST, and the [reissuing of her earlier] novels was linked so as to elevate a hot property to celebrity status and to have the greatest possible impact upon the public" (Norton, 94).
James Boaden was an important writer in the turn-of-the-century British theater scene, especially as a biographer of major figures like John Kemble, Sarah Siddons, and Elizabeth Inchbald. This was an early career production, only his second play; in 1797 he would adapt another Radcliffe novel, THE ITALIAN, as THE ITALIAN MONK.
Read more: Norton, Mistress of Udolpho.
The Object
London: Printed for Hookham and Carpenter, 1794. 8.25'' x 5.5''. Early twentieth-century brad-bound plain paper wrappers, paper printed title label. [6], 70 pages. Ink name "James Boaden" and date "1794" to title label. Moderate wear to spine. Some soil to edges of text.
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