Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now

Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now is a three-year AHRC-funded project that seeks to re-establish Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) as a major figure in British literature of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as well as to commemorate her as a pioneering writer whose influence is still of considerable cultural significance today.

Radcliffe’s influence on Gothic, Romantic and Victorian literature is difficult to overstate, yet she has not, at least since her heyday during the 1790s, enjoyed the same household-name status as some of her contemporary writers, like Jane Austen, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. To redress this imbalance, Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now oversees the publication of the first-ever complete scholarly edition of Radcliffe’s full oeuvre.

Under the general editorship of Michael Gamer and Angela Wright, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe will be published by Cambridge University Press in eight volumes between 2025–28. Working with Gamer and Wright as part of the editorial team are Project Co-Leads Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University), Deborah Russell (University of York), and Dale Townshend (Manchester Metropolitan University), and volume editors Elizabeth Bobbitt (University of York), Tom Duggett (Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University) and Robert Miles (University of Victoria). Rosie Whitcombe (University of Sheffield) is the project’s Research Associate.

The only known portrait of Radcliffe, black and white image of a woman in a ruffled colour wearing a large hat

In addition to this major editorial undertaking, the project will develop and lead a series of public engagement activities, including a conference, reading groups and public lectures, all of which are designed to broaden Radcliffe’s contemporary readership, celebrate her significance in the development of Gothic and Romantic literature and demonstrate how her influence can still be felt in literature and other cultural media today.