RADCLIFFE, ANN WARD, author of the Romance of the Forest and the Mysteries of Udolpho, was born in London on the 9th of July 1764. At the age of twenty-three, she acquired the name which she subsequently rendered famous, by marrying William Radcliffe, a graduate of Oxford, and then a student of law. This gentleman renounced the prosecution of his legal studies, and afterwards became proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle. Mrs. Radcliffe having thus a strong inducement to cultivate her literary powers, first came before the public as a novelist in 1789, in the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. Her genius, however, was more advantageously displayed in the Sicilian Romance, which appeared in 1790, and attracted a considerable share of public attention. The Romance of the Forest appeared in 1791, and at once raised the authoress to that pre-eminence in her own style of composition which her works have ever since maintained. In 1798 Mrs. Radcliffe visited the scenery on the Rhine, and it is supposed that the Mysteries of Udolpho were written, or at least corrected, after the period of this journey; the mouldering castles of the robber-chivalry of Germany, situated on the romantic banks of that celebrated stream, having, it is thought, given a bolder flight to her imagination, and a more glowing character to her colouring. Her remarks upon the countries through which she travelled were given to the public in 1793, under the title of a Journey through Holland, &c. This, however, was merely a sort of intercalary production. The next production by which Mrs. Radcliffe attracted the attention of the public was destined to be her last. The Italian, which appeared in 1797, was purchased by the booksellers for £800, and favourably received by the public. The tenor of her domestic life was peculiarly calm and sequestered. She appears to have declined the notoriety which in London society usually attaches to persons of literary distinction. During the last twelve years of her life Mrs. Radcliffe suffered from a spasmodic asthma, which considerably affected both her health and spirits. This chronic disorder, however, at length took a more fatal turn on the 9th of January, and on the 7th of February 1836 it terminated her life. (For an estimate of her works, see ROMANCE.)