Recommendations
Books Like The Italian
Best books to read after The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
Readers who love The Italian by Ann Radcliffe are drawn to its combination of Radcliffe's finest and most concentrated Gothic investigation, the extraordinary villain Schedoni (whose cold calculating intelligence is Radcliffe's demonstration that human evil is more terrifying than the supernatural), and the investigation of female vulnerability and survival in a world of male tyranny. They want works that deal with the Gothic villain, the persecuted heroine, and the female Gothic tradition at its most concentrated.
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Buy on AmazonThe Mysteries of Udolpho
by Ann Radcliffe
Radcliffe's companion predecessor — Emily St. Aubert and Montoni. The companion as the longer and more spacious version of the same investigation: where The Italian is more concentrated, The Mysteries of Udolpho is four volumes of accumulated terror and the novel that made Radcliffe the most popular novelist in England
- 2Buy on Amazon
The Monk
by Matthew Lewis
Lewis's companion — the text Radcliffe was partly responding to. The Italian was written immediately after The Monk and partly as Radcliffe's demonstration that the most effective Gothic villain does not need the supernatural to be terrifying
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Buy on AmazonJane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
The companion Victorian heir — the female Gothic tradition. Jane Eyre is the fullest Victorian development of the tradition Radcliffe established in The Italian: the Gothic villain (Schedoni/Rochester), the innocent heroine in the threatening great house, and the investigation of female vulnerability and survival
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Buy on AmazonRebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
Du Maurier's companion — the second Mrs. de Winter at Manderley. The companion as the twentieth-century female Gothic heir: Rebecca uses all the conventions Radcliffe established (the isolated great house, the threatened woman, the sinister authority figures, the secret from the past)
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Buy on AmazonFrankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Shelley's companion — the Gothic novel's transformation into philosophical fiction. Mary Shelley engages explicitly with the Radcliffean tradition in Frankenstein and uses the Gothic conventions Radcliffe had developed to investigate questions of creation and responsibility that go beyond the Gothic tradition
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Buy on AmazonThe Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Wilde's companion — Lord Henry Wotton's calculating manipulation of Dorian. The companion as the aestheticist heir of the Schedoni-type villain: Lord Henry Wotton's cold, calculating manipulation of Dorian Gray is organized around the same combination of intelligence, ambition, and moral coldness that makes Schedoni such a powerful figure
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Buy on AmazonThe Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
The companion predecessor — the founding text. The companion as the origin: where Walpole established the conventions that Radcliffe fully realized, The Italian is Radcliffe's most complete and concentrated realization of those conventions
- 8Buy on Amazon
Melmoth the Wanderer
by Charles Maturin
Maturin's companion — the wandering figure of supernatural evil. The companion as the final flowering of the same Gothic tradition: where Radcliffe's Schedoni is a human villain who achieves Gothic terror through human intelligence, Maturin's Melmoth is a supernatural figure who achieves the same terror through his relationship to damnation and suffering
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