For the sake of authenticity, original spellings – including eighteenth-century variants, such as ‘poinard’ and ‘poniard’ – have been retained, as have inconsistencies of hyphenation. A few obvious printer’s errors, such as ‘hebade’ for ‘he bade’ and ‘frem’ for ‘from’, have been silently corrected, and Radcliffe’s misspellings of ‘Thompson’ for the poet James Thomson and of ‘Sayer’ (on one occasion) for the poet Frank Sayers have been emended. Her ‘heavy’ punctuation, with its proliferation of commas and dashes, has been left virtually untouched, preserving the logical ordering of hierarchical relationships of units within her sentences. However, the jarring capitalization of ‘de’ in ‘de Villeroi’ has been returned to lower case wherever it appears in Volume II, as has the capitalization of ‘de’ in ‘de Villefort’ on occasion in Volumes III and IV; ‘D’Emery’ has been changed to ‘d’Emery’ in Volume I. Again for consistency, ‘St Claire’ in Volume III has been silently corrected to the ‘St Clair’ which appears elsewhere. Some passages originally in square brackets in Volume IV have instead been enclosed in parentheses, and asterisks and closing quotation marks have been transposed in references to Radcliffe’s footnotes. The chapter numbers in Volume I have been emended after Chapter VII, to make them sequential, and that of Chapter III in Volume II has been corrected. A few loose stitches in the textual fabric, to adapt Sir Walter Scott’s knitting metaphor, have also been attended to. One example occurs in Chapter VIII of Volume III, where ‘replied Ugo’, which is obviously a mistake, has been emended to ‘replied the soldier’. Emendations of such minor incoherencies are tabulated below.
The Penguin Classics house style has been imposed throughout. Full stops after contractions such as ‘St’ and after headings and source lines have been deleted. Unspaced em dashes have been changed to spaced en dashes, and other dashes have been halved in length. ‘CHAP’ has been spelt out in chapter headings, and the opening words of chapters have been set in upper and lower case rather than capitals and small capitals. Single quotation marks have been used throughout, with double quotation marks for quotations within dialogue, and closing quotation marks have not been used at the end of a paragraph when dialogue continues at the start of the next paragraph.
Radcliffe’s inconsistent practice in identifying the source of quotations which occur as epigraphs to chapters and in the text has been addressed by citing both the name of the author and the title of the work, the added material being placed in square brackets. The titles of the works quoted have been changed to upper-and-lower-case italics. Omission of whole lines in quoted verse has been indicated by a line of spaced full stops, rather than by the long rule or rules used by Radcliffe. Fuller details of the sources are given in end-notes, as are details of those quotations for which Radcliffe does not herself give a source. Notes have also been provided on matters of textual interest as well as on passages which assume knowledge of eighteenth-century society, literature, customs, taste and manners.
PENGUIN TEXT 1794 EDITION
[I/139] Montoni was not at home Montoni was at home
[II/227] hall. Says Carlo hall, says Carlo
[III/366] lest it should not be he lest it should be he
[III/404] replied the soldier replied Ugo
[III/442] my late lord, the Marquis my late lord, the Count
[IV/529] Henri and the Count Henri and the servant
THE
MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO,
A
ROMANCE;
INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PIECES OF POETRY
BY
ANN RADCLIFFE,
AUTHOR OF THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST, ETC.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
Fate sits on these dark battlements, and frowns,
And, as the portals open to receive me,
Her voice, in sullen echoes through the courts,
Tells of a nameless deed.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER - ROW.
1794.
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
‘_______home is the resort
Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where,
Supporting and supported, polish’d friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.’
Thomson [The Seasons, ‘Autumn’]1
On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony, stood, in the year 1584, the chateau of Monsieur St Aubert. From its windows were seen the pastoral landscapes of Guienne and Gascony, stretching along the river, gay with luxuriant woods and vines, and plantations of olives. To the south, the view was bounded by the majestic Pyrenées, whose summits, veiled in clouds, or exhibiting awful forms, seen, and lost again, as the partial vapours rolled along, were sometimes barren, and gleamed through the blue tinge of air, and sometimes frowned with forests of gloomy pine, that swept downward to their base. These tremendous precipices were contrasted by the soft green of the pastures and woods that hung upon their skirts; among whose flocks, and herds, and simple cottages, the eye, after having scaled the cliffs above, delighted to repose. To the north, and to the east, the plains of Guienne and Languedoc were lost in the mist of distance; on the west, Gascony was bounded by the waters of Biscay.
M. St Aubert loved to wander, with his wife and daughter, on the margin of the Garonne, and to listen to the music that floated on its waves. He had known life in other forms than those of pastoral simplicity, having mingled in the gay and in the busy scenes of the world; but the flattering portrait of mankind, which his heart had delineated in early youth, his experience had too sorrowfully corrected. Yet, amidst the changing visions of life, his principles remained unshaken, his benevolence unchilled; and he retired from the multitude ‘more in pity than in anger,’2 to scenes of simple nature, to the pure delights of literature, and to the exercise of domestic virtues.
He was a descendant from the younger branch of an illustrious family, and it was designed, that the deficiency of his patrimonial wealth should be supplied either by a splendid alliance in marriage, or by success in the intrigues of public affairs.
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