Founded on facts', and 'a German story, founded on incidents in real life'. The vexed question of the relation between (popular) literature and history, fantasy and actuality, is implied in the subtitles of Isabella's 'horrid novels': 'A Tale', 'A Story', 'A Romance' 'a German tale', a 'tale. Given that Northanger Abbey was in large part written in 1798, one might suggest that the last group of texts signals for Austen the genre's contemporaneity and its still rapidly increasing popularity. The second group of texts on Isabella's list were published in the same year as Matthew Lewis' The Monk, the text that established the most important alternative to Radcliffe's gothic. The first group appeared, therefore, during the height of the Terror in France, and during the first phase of the Gothic craze of the 1790s, that began with Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance (1790) and The Romance of the Forest (1792) and entered its second, still more popular phase in 1794, with the publication of Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. The earliest of the novels on Isabella's list were published in 17 two appeared in 1796 and the remainder in 1798. A Story, translated from the German of the Marquis of Grosse by Peter Will (London: Minerva, 1796).

A Romance (London: Minerva, 1798) and Horrid Mysteries.

Symonds, 1798) Eleanor Sleath's The Orphan of the Rhine. Founded on facts, translated by Peter Teuthold from the German of Karl Friedrich Kahlert (London: Minerva, 1794) Francis Lathom's The Midnight Bell, a German story, founded on incidents in real life (London: H.D. A Tale (London: Minerva, 1798) Parsons' The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale (London: Minerva, 1796) The Necromancer or, The tale of the Black Forest. Those will last us some time.'Ī useful overview of the Gothic as it emerged in the 1790s is provided by Isabella Thorpe's list of 'horrid novels', mentioned earlier as the chief support and object of Sadleir's biblio-mania: Eliza Parson's Castle of Wolfenbach (London: Minerva, 1793) Regina Maria Roche's Clermont. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. 'I will read you their names directly here they are, in my pocket-book. 'Have you, indeed! How glad I am! – What are they all?' 'Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you'.

The midnight bell francis lathom