The Romance of the Forest

The Romance of the Forest, by Ann Radcliffe, is the Gothic novel I was assigned to read for the tutorial, since I'm focusing on Northanger Abbey for this project. If it's taken me into the mind of Jane Austen, oh, how I fear for the mind of Jane Austen. After reading it, I can say that I didn't hate it, but I wasn't a fan either. And maybe that's not unexpected. It was a pleasure to see where Jane Austen was basically mining material from in Northanger Abbey, though. There are some scenes-- like when Adeline descends into the chambers beneath her room and finds a rusty dagger and a manuscript-- where Austen's writing seemed bizarre and funny to me before and now has acquired some level of heaviness that I didn't expect. It's just-- it almost ceases to be parody and approaches plagiarism.

But, you say, you're not telling me what the book is about.