1001 Group Read May, 2012: The Mysteries of Udolpho

Here's the string. Have at it!!

This is the most bizarre reading experience I've had in a while. A book written by an English woman but set in France. A book written in the late 18th century but set in the late 16th century. As I read the descriptions of the landscape as the characters are journeying (for no obvious reason) to the south of France, I am inexorably reminded of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. It's all so SUBLIME. Yet mysterious, of course.

Right now I am listening on Books on Tape and have managed to get through 1/7 of the book in a month. My plan is to continue with the tapes for the next couple of weeks and then finish it more quickly on paper.

I read a review that said that the second book was a whole lot better than the first. This thought sustains me.

I am not reading Mysteries of Udolpho now because I attempted it a couple of years ago and could not get through it. I rarely abandon books, but I just couldn't do it anymore. I got to 50% on my kindle and said enough is enough. For me the flowery language and terrible poetry put me over the edge. There was so much of it that I couldn't follow the plot. I'm a huge Jane Austen fan, so I had expectations that this would be a fast, exciting read (a page-turner) because of Northanger Abbey. Not so much.

Maybe someone in the group read will inspire me to give it another go, but I doubt it. :-)

Good luck - I'm interested to see what you think in the end!

Well, there was a bit where we entered Society and I figured out what Jane Austen saw in this book. But then Our Heroine's Aunt made a dreadful late-life marriage to a dubious Italian (!!) and we moved out of Jane-land into melodrama. Our Heroine is increasingly on the verge of fainting, tears, or some combination thereof. Yet it is certainly more lively now than in the first 100 pages.

What I cannot figure out is why this book is set in the 16th century. As far as I can discern, the ONLY concession the author has made to historicism is that Emily plays the lute in her moments of melancholy. Otherwise it seems totally about the 1790s. I feel certain that gentlemen in renaissance France did not have "regiments" to which they were dashingly attached. Wasn't the structure of the military totally different then?

Those are interesting questions about the 16th century setting. I'm not sure I know enough about the differences between the two eras to make any intelligent comments. I wonder if in the 18th century, it was enough for "historical fiction" to have an "exotic" setting - i.e. the castle in Italy. I also thought all the traveling might be a nod to the troubadors. I don't know - I was so annoyed with the writing style, that I didn't do a lot of thinking about the book.

Are you getting into it at all?

I've made a start on the book now. A pleasant enough read so far - not as histrionic as I'd feared, though plenty of melancholy tears. I'm trying not to be too analytical as much of the story so far doesn't seem to stack up (eg why would an ailing father take himself and his daughter on a road trip up difficult, bandit-ridden mountainous roads as a cure for his ailments; one minute he is fading fast and the next he's bounding up precipitous cliffs to collect flowers and take in the view.......). Like others have said I haven't got the 16th centrury in my mind as I read this.

I felt bad for not reading it after having voted for it, so I got the not free but cheap Kindle version last night, the one with the illustrations, and started reading. No way will I finish it in May, but I'll do my best to get through it. So far it's not a difficult read, but I am only 5% in. It doesn't feel 'French' at all, and I had to laugh about the 'improvements' to buildings that are mentioned so often, because this seems very British to me. It's also a bit too idyllic, it's like looking at one of those romantic paintings. The peasants dancing by the river (or was it the servants?) was also such an unreal scene.

My goodness, that girl can weep!

Finally got a copy from the library this morning. Only two chapters in, but enjoying it so far (Gothic romance is certainly up my alley.) I'm on vacation this week and hoping to make a good dent in it.

Spoilers for chaper VII:

I just finished chapter VII, and although I can't say I am having much fun with this novel so far, my heart is breaking for poor Emily. Which doctor in his right mind, even in the 1600s, would send such an ill man on such a strenuous journey, without a clear destination as it seems? They just travelled, and never had a decent place to spend the night.
Spoiler end

I read the comment in the 1001 book for this novel and it says that Ann Radcliffe used the landscapes to convey human emotions. I feel like I am in a museum watching old oil paintings in brownish colors of wild landscapes, shepherds with their herds, peasants by the fire... It's not a difficult to read book, but I'd agree with annamorphic, it's kind of bizarre.

I've now reached the part (midway through Book I) where our heroine arrives in Venice. It's actually great fun! I just taught a course on early 16th-century Venice and I keep thinking, where did Ann Radcliffe get the idea that renaissance Venice was like this? Is this what it was really like in the late 18th century? All the wild parties and casinos! Anyway, this is much more lively than the earlier chapters, although Emily is miserable and keeps pining for 1) nature and 2) Valancourt. There is a great scene where she is at the opera, thinking about how much more sublime nature is than culture.

I finished vol. 1 today and spoiler for vol 1 chapter 13
Valancourt really got on my nerves here. It is the most drawn-out and therefore unintentionally ridiculous farewell scene I ever read.

And just when he was again exclaiming that "Emily couldn't love him because then she would'nt go away" and when I was thinking "why is he screaming all the time when there's such danger someone will hear him", Emily says this wonderful sentence "We have now little time to waste in exclamation, or assertion (...), if you are yet to learn how dear you are, and ever must be, to my heart, no assurances of mine can give you conviction". .

I am now convinced that here we have a heroine who might cry and faint a lot, but who has a strong and reasonable mind and will do what's best for her. I finally start liking her.

Looking forward to those Valancourt-free Venice scenes now!

#4: interesting point about the regiment. I only noticed they give Valancourt free time whenever he needs it which seems to be always. How will he ever make a career there?

Emily and her aunt's servant returned from the convent to La Vallée in just two days. How long had it taken her and her father to get there? Felt like weeks. Valancourt was with them for quite some time.

I've also arrived in Venice. Looking forward to the pace picking up and the tears subsiding now that droopy Valancourt is (for how long...?) off the scene.

From Venice to Udolpho. Ann Radcliffe's tendency to exaggerate the scenery in the earlier chapters works well here as she builds a picture of imposing mountains and dark forests surrounding the gloomy gothic castle.

I finished Volume I today, and am glad to hear it will start picking up.

>12 Deern: - Thanks for your Emily quote. I missed this because frankly I was skimming through Valancourt's fit. I had been thinking Emily was too weepy and faint-y for my taste, but that quote shows some insight. I was surprised too at how quickly the journey back home was in comparison to the journey out, they must have really been meandering.

Is it bad that I am looking forward to seeing how badly the aunt is crushed when she is faced with reality (or at least what I am guessing reality reveals)?

I too have just arrived in Venice!

>14 puckers: I too am looking forward to the aunt receiving some comeuppance. Perverse little thing that I am!

About to start Volume 2. The differences in travel time didn't bother me so much -- I just figured they took the scenic route at a leisurely place (after all St. Aubert was sick.) I just Emily essentially raced home as quickly as possible.

I can take Emily's near constant weeping, but agree that Valancourt's display was a bit much. It's shame there wasn't more of their idyllic courtship included in the book -- it may have rounded out his character a bit more.

This book is getting better by leaps and bounds! Once Emily arrives at Udolpho (and it only took a few hundred pages) things really liven up. I am also coming to admire Emily's steely resolve amidst the near-faints and near-tears. The men around her are so pathetic! The scene where the Count pleads his case after breaking into her room in the dead of night is just so lame -- right there with the hapless Valancourt.
And what is behind the black curtain? What were those few words she read before she burnt her father's papers? Were there not some unexplained happenings in the garden at the very beginning of the book which I have now forgotten (the problem of listening on tape)? This way of not letting us know what dreadful things Emily has discovered is quite frustrating...

I hope all those things will be explained, those in the garden as well. For now (at 45%) I am very disappointed with Valancourt, although somehow I like what Radcliffe is doing here, it's much closer to real life than anything else. He was sooo over-passionate, and now...

#19 and # 20 I am now at the start of volume 4. I won't give anything away as you have a fair bit to plod through yet, other than to say the unidentifed admirer from the start of the book has now been identified, and I think we're close to having father's papers explained. Having just completed Cold Comfort Farm the thing behind the curtain has taken on the character of the "something nasty in the woodshed"!

> 19 I have also just arrived at Udolpho so am looking forward to things 'picking up'. I don't think I am going to make it by the end of the month, though!

I can promise you all the mysteries do get explained. But you have to wait until the last couple of chapters for a few of them. As I was reading along, I kept thinking I was going to be mad if the if that black curtain wasn't explained. I wasn't super happy with the explanation, but at least there was one.

thought I'd pick this up having not done a readalong with you lot before. Just having burned the papers, I've some way to go...

I thought that the thing behind the curtain might be the Mirror of Erised. Honestly, what else can blend into a gallery behind a black curtain besides a picture or a mirror? I am hoping that Radcliffe beat Rowling to it by a few hundred years.

On a more serious note, I've finally placed Valancourt and the Count in their abject, pathetic devotion to Emily. It's Petrarchan romance! This was a huge big deal in 17th-century Holland but why not in 18th-century England (or 16th-century Italy) too? In Petrarchan romance the male lover is the devoted slave, helpless in his unquenchable adoration. The stern woman can wound him fatally by spurning his entreaties. Illustrations to such texts show things like a young men plunging a sword into his chest as the cruel beloved turns away. Women liked this framework a lot (in the 17th century) because it gave them a kind of power, and clearly Ann Radcliffe liked it too.

Whew! Now that I've explained the men's lame behavior I can pursue the mysteries!

Now this is a good group read not reading along with this one but just sooooooo love all the comments and discussions.

Oh god, I am finding this tedious!! :-{

I just finished David Copperfield on audiobook and loved it, although it was also tedious at times!

I switched from reading this on my Kobo to listening to it on my MP3 and I am finding it very difficult to focus. Please, please tell me this gets better. I am just at the point where Emily is visiting with her uncle and they are expecting her to marry the count....blech...well, at least he seems to be enamoured of her.

I am giving up for the next few hours and going back to the Grapes of Wrath which I am loving

Finished! (with spoilers).

This was a good choice for a Group Read as there was no way I was going to pick up a 700 page, 18th century Gothic romance without receiving some encouragement. Having said that I did find this book a bit of a slog.

On the positives, Radcliffe does spend considerable time building atmosphere, and she has strongly drawn characters. The early scenes at Udolpho were the highlights for me – spooky and oppressive. And the character of Annette provided comic relief throughout.

However I did find the book increasingly tedious. This was chiefly because of the behaviour of the heroine, Emily. Hardly a page goes by without her weeping, trembling, leaning on objects for support or fainting senseless to the floor. I don’t deny that she had good reasons for being emotional – all her relatives die, and her imprisonment by the evil Count Montoni seemed without hope – but her escape from Udolpho didn’t come a moment too soon for me as well as her!

The pathetic Valancourt was the other character who made me groan and their on-again-off-again romance dragged on too long. Thanks to #25 for putting this into context.

Other things I didn’t really like were the gaps in plausibility of the plot and the incredible coincidences. The story would have been more readable if Radcliffe had fleshed out some of the more dramatic events – e.g. the siege of Udolpho, and the capture and death of Montoni, but these are dismissed in a couple of paragraphs - and sacrificed some of the endless melancholy twilight scenes.

Overlong and overwrought. 2/5

Oooh, the exploding glass! The ghostly figure on the ramparts! The gang of condottieri terrorizing the countryside! But really, the exploding glass was the high point of the book so far. Fantastic!

300 pages left to go and they feel like a long 300 pages. Yet in some way I know that I will, at the end, be glad to have read The Mysteries of Udolpho. Goodness knows it will make impressive academic cocktail party conversation. Even colleagues in English Literature have not all, I'd wager, ploughed through this particular classic.

Exploding glass? Thanks for giving me an impulse to read some more chapters this weekend! I was getting bored, still only at 55%, with Emily now being all alone.

I think people who find the book tedious and are annoyed by the heroin and mystified by the 16th century setting need to remember the time in which it was written. It was intended as a gothic novel, and gothic novels were traditionally set in the past, which was thought to give it a more mysterious athmosphere, the days of the past being a time of mysteries and superstitions. The setting in France and Italy gives it a touch of the exotic, and of course Italy is thought to be a 'romantic' country. The heroin is a woman, and women are supposed to be easily frightened and prone to hysterics and fainting.

Personally I really loved the book. I read it years ago (I've been a great fan of gothic fiction ever since I was in my teens). It is one of the great gothic romances, combining pretty much all characteristics of the traditional gothic novel. Of course it's not a modern novel, but you can hardly expect that... For some of the people who find it a mystifying novel, it might be an idea to read some other gothic novels to get more familiar with the genre, or to read more about gothic fiction...

#31, isn't this considered the first Gothic novel? Before the genre exists, you can't look to its parameters to explain authorial decisions. You are right that what Radcliffe is aiming at is clearly the mysterious and exotic -- like besieged castles and bands of fierce mercenaries (and exploding glasses!) are not part of late 18th-century English culture. Nor, indeed, dead bodies kept willy-nilly around your country house. I find it kind of funny to think of 1580s Italy as the land of depravity and danger (20 years after the Council of Trent and nobody even thinks of getting Extreme Unction for the dying Mme Montoni!), but OK, it seems to work for Radcliffe.

Still, there are authorial decisions that mystify me. Like the little holiday at a cottage in Tuscany. Why on earth did Montoni have her taken there when the castle was under seige, wasting the time of two of his fighters and running, surely, a greater risk that she would be caught than if she'd just stayed in the castle? I can see no reason for this jaunt except to give Emily and the reader a glimpse of the beautiful Tuscan countryside and a sigh-producing sight of the sea. But perhaps the logic has yet to be revealed.

Do Clarissa and Pamela sob and faint with the regularity of Emily? I haven't read those for a long time but they must be the precedents here, somehow.

#32, No, it wasn't the first of gothic novels; Castle of Otranto is older, for one, and so is Vathek. I think Castle of Otranto was considered to be the first of gothic novels, if I remember correctly, and it was supposed to be a bit of a hype in the late 18th century... with Radcliffe following the hype that started earlier. At least, that's what I remember from lit-class, but I'm not an expert :/

more of an expert than most of us Britt! I've switched from ebook to audio book. If I'm going to have to go through this melodrama, I'll let it be at the expense of someone else's breath!

#32. I assumed that the side trip was to avoid writing the detail of the siege as action does not appear to be Radcliffe's strong suit. But there again she didn't really need the siege at all so that doesn't seem valid. Alternatively I thought the family they lodged with might appear later, but they didn't. Maybe it was just to get to her contracted page-count!

#33, thank you! I see that both of the predecessors you mention are on the 1001 list so I guess I'll be picking those up some time in the coming years. I've read a lot of the earlier 18th-century things on the list but absolutely nothing later in the century, so I'm a novice in the Gothic genre!

Arukiyomi, I did the first half on audio book and it took me well over a month of my commuting time. But it was pretty enjoyable. I only had the first half because that's what somebody was selling on e-bay...

#33 well, if you think Udolpho is a bizar reading experience, you should definitely read Castle of Otranto... Now that is one weird novel...

Just a more random question: do many people do audio-books? It just seems weird to me to do a '1001 books you must READ before you die' without the reading part :P I've never actually listened to an audio book, so I don't really know what it's like, but yeah, I'm just surprised at finding people are listening rather than reading...

#37, I have 3 teen-aged kids with Activities and live 65 miles away from my work. So I spend a lot of time in the car with my audio books! I actually find that a really GOOD book is better on audio because it makes you savor every single word. (Don Quixote and Uncle Tom's Cabin and Suite Francaise were all wonderful on audio) but a bad book on audio is really really bad because you cannot skim or skip (On Beauty and Saturday were painful!). So in short, I usually have an audio and a paper book going at any given moment. Since I switched to paper for the second half of Udolpho I've started The Light of Day on audio.

Oh, I can see the point of listening to books in the car, that must be great. But I actually don't own a car, nor do I have a driver's license, so if I do have to go somewhere I go by train or bus, and I always just carry a book with me so I can read while travelling. Maybe I should try audio books sometime; I'm just a bit hesitant because I so enjoy reading, but if you say it can actually be nice when it's a good book, I guess it's worth a try. Maybe I'm just terribly old-fashioned :P

For those interested in reading The Castle of Otranto (and also for those who have read it already), there has been a tutored read in the 75group which gives lots of background, explains many of the old-fashioned expressions and also informs about the gothic novel in general. Naturally full of spoilers. It's here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/131508
In post #27 there's some spoiler-free info on the typical gothic novel which fits very well with the Udolpho storyline.

I didn't read as much as I had hoped last weekend, so no exploding glass yet. Clarissa is taking up much of my time and I am trying to get through Patterns of Childhood before May ends, so I might be taking Udolpho into June. The siege is just starting and it has been announced that Emily will be transferred, so I guess I'll get to those Tuscany chapters now. Emily is fainting a lot, but if I was in her situation I might already have jumped off the next best tower.

The tutorial on The Castle of Otranto is really nice, I really like it...
Also, there's also a group on the site called "gothic literature", they discuss various gothic novels, and their group can also be a great way of getting to know other gothic works, for those who are enjoying the genre :)

I recently started listening to audiobooks although I did listen to some books on tape about 20 years ago when my kids were small. It kept them amused when we were traveling. I'm really liking the idea since I can 'read' in the car or while doing housework. Today, I spent 3 hours preparing dinner for my extended family and it was great!
I finished David Copperfield and the reader, Tadhg Hynes had a beautiful narrative voice, totally suited to the work. I am now listening to The Mysteries of Udolpho obtained through Librivox and the narration is done by many different readers, some of whom I cannot stand to listen. So, I have been switching back and forth between the audio and the real. Been working for me now.

I'm more than happy to do the washing up every single mealtime IF, and it's a pretty big IF, I can listen to books while I"m doing it. Walking to work is much more fun too (well, it usually is when I'm not listening to this Udolpho mess ;-)

>43 arukiyomi: - 'this Udolpho mess' ... I am with you on this one! Although I think it is just a little bit better at Vol 3 chapter 3. At least SOMETHING is happening. I am so sick of long, long, long descriptive paragraphs about nothing and more nothing .... aaarrrrgggg. But I am persevering! Why, I'll never know, oh, yeah, something about 1001 books ... or something ?

SPOILERS to around ch. 33-34

Yes, any self-respecting heroine would have managed to escape from the Tuscan cottage, guarded as she was by only one guy (inclined to drink) and helped by a spunky teen-aged peasant girl who likes to dance. I mean, the opportunities were blatant! Instead she trots meekly back to Udolpho to be re-imprisoned. Oh, and then she signs away her inheritance without even being sent to the torture chamber, or even threatened with it -- she just thinks "hey, he promises to send me home if I do this, and of course he will keep his promise". How can she be so daft?

But that scene the first night she is back, when she is rushing around the castle in the darkness afraid of Varezzi and his pals, was quite good.

Spoiler for the second half of vol. 3:

I found that scene hilarious when first they notice they don't have any money and then find some in the saddle bags, and it's just the amount that will get them all back to France.

Btw I was relieved that the prisoner wasn't Valancourt, that would just have been too much. I have no idea why Emily and Annette believed at once that it could be him. Because he sang French songs, so must be French, so must be Valancourt? (the medaillon story came a bit later)

Last night I read some pages while being already half-asleep, and today I can't remember who Blanche is. Is this a different storyline with a different heroine in a different castle? I am confused, but too lazy to read it all again.

isn't Blanche the character you become when you realise you have another two and a half volumes to wade through.... or, more accurately, to listen to someone else wade through.

And, on a side note, I'm listening to the librivox.org version. You get what you pay for with that website, no doubt about it. At the moment, I've got this one guy who seems to think that a comma indicates that the reader show respect for the dead author with a minute's silence.

The reader on Books on Tape was none too lively either.
Deern, I am exactly where you are. Besides Blanche (yes, a completely new character unrelated to anything that has come before, as far as I can judge) there is Dorothee, who I swear is never introduced as having that name.

>47 arukiyomi:
I've got this one guy who seems to think that a comma indicates that the reader show respect for the dead author with a minute's silence. hahahha

I could tolerate the long pauses ......but I could not tolerate some of the voices. For two chapters from one reader and two chapters from another, I stopped the audio and read those chapters. (from The Gutenberg Project.) I know the readers are volunteers and not professionals but is no-one checking for quality control?

#47: LOL! I think I found him! And there are several readers, each reading a couple of chapters? This would make the listening very difficult for me.

#48: thank you! It felt like a new story had started, I doubted my memory.

Angry spoiler for end of vol. 3 and first 2 chapters of vol. 4
I guess Emily will end up with Valancourt, but I so wish she wouldn't. Not because he is no longer worthy of her (although his behaviour during her absence says a lot about his general character imo), but because he tries to put the blame on her ("If you'd still love me..."). No matter what this poor girl has been through and how she made it back only by constantly thinking of him, believing in his love and faithfulness - it's all about HIM! It's emotional abuse! HE has a right to doubt her love, after clearly having shown how much he believed in hers.

"You would find your own happiness in saving mine". No, idiot - she was all happy before she knew you needed saving. She'll forever have to watch over him and when he misbehaves he can blame her. He clearly has a very big problem.

I am however pleasantly surprised that Ann Radcliffe adds such unexpected 'depth' to what I thought was the stereotype of the romantic hero. I just wish she'd avoid the 'happy' ending.

I finished this over the weekend and thought I would take a few days to see if my dismay at the ending would subside before I start ranting…alas it hasn’t. Throughout the book, Radcliffe leaves you hanging, whether it is about who was writing poems in the fish house, what was behind the veiled picture, why was St. Aubert all agitated when they ended up near some random castle, and I of course wanted answers. She did resolve all of these, and like an earlier post hinted, I was majorly disappointed. I thought most explanations were implausible, or just ludicrous. Spoiler – like Valencourt’s indiscretions were all just a big misunderstanding, so now he’s not an unworthy idiot?!? Instead of doing the poor me routine in Paris, why wasn’t he chasing after Emily and protecting her or at least playing army? I think the one exception was the explanation as to the haunting of Blanche’s castle and the disappearance of Ludaveco (sp?). What can I say - I have a love/hate relationship with books that are wrapped up in a nice little bow.

Despite all that, I give it a 3 star rating…parts were good, it mostly kept my interest, and I think it will stick with me. I really liked the tutorial about gothic literature. It shared some insight as to why certain choices were made regarding character development and setting, but I guess the gothic novel isn’t my cup of tea, because parts were still frustrating.

I really love this discussion. Though it was quite a while since I read the book, the discussion makes me remember it.

As I move into the last 200 pages the sheer craziness of this book is coming to appeal to me, and my college days of reading the works of Barbara Cartland feel not quite so wasted!

So there in Languedoc we have this co-ed monastery where the monks and nuns sing together in the choir but the nuns never see the light of day -- never a sunrise, never a sunset. Even Blanche, as a young lay woman being educated by them, has had no sight of the natural world for years. It's like they live in a space ship or something.

Nearby is this castle that contains, evidently, Europe's first collection of family portraits, since in the 1580s you would not yet have generations upon generations hanging dust-covered in the oldest part of your castle -- they'd all be pretty new, at that time.

Oh, and Valancourt the regimental card sharp. He's also a man ahead of his time! Not only is he already dashingly attached to a regiment before there were such things (I'm pretty sure on that), but he's a gambler. There were gamblers at cards by this 1580s but it definitely wasn't so widespread a thing that your average dissolute rogue was making his money by cheating his friends.

I gather that Emily will continue to spurn poor old DuPont and instead endeavor to rescue Valancourt from his own decline and, by her virtue, restore him to his former goodness. What a shame, when he was such an avant-garde rascal.

finally arrived at Udolpho which is already looking very mysterious. That there is more than one mystery is keeping me on the edge of my seat.

NOT

>54 arukiyomi: Oh, my god, John, you are making me laugh!!! I read your above post and had to scroll down before I saw the 'NOT' and I thought to myself, "Well, he CERTAINLY has changed his impression of the book, what is wrong with ME!!" and then I saw the 'NOT' and I literally burst out laughing!

At least I am getting a few laughs from this awful read!

#47 - lol, that must be irritating... Maybe it gives you more time to think about the story? ;)
#51 - I read the book so long ago I don't quite remember all the details of the plot, but I do remember I was also somewhat disappointed at the ending. But I did like most of the book, so yeah, I guess you can't have everything :P

#53 - I'm sort of imagining Ann Radcliffe going like 'Hey, it's just to have a nice setting, nobody said it had to be historically accurate!'
I mean, I don't know if that's how she felt, but it does seem that in most gothic stories authors just make the story play out in the past, without ever bothering to get some information on what the situation was actually like at that time. But I have to admit that my historical knowledge is pretty limited, so it didn't bother me that much, because I guess I just failed to notice most of the historical inaccuracies :/ Shame on me... I keep thinking I should really know more about history :/

I'm with you ccookie. For me, this thread is more like a therapy group. If we help each other, we can all make it through, right? Right?

Hi, I'm John and I'm a gothic romance reader. I've been sober for about 7 minutes...

This thread is definitely helping me through it even though we're wandering all over Udolpho now and the aunt (who I NEVER thought she'd get on with) is now missing. Duh, duh, duuuuuuhhhhh...

We should group-read more of those long pre-1800s classics, this is fun!

Is it just me or was anyone else annoyed with Radcliffe's overuse of the word sublime?

nlgeorge, Yes, I too sometimes feel drowned by the super-Romanticism of this book.

"Sublime" is the key aesthetic term in this period. Especially landscape is supposed to be sublime, and to induce a sense of mingled awe, wonder, and a kind of dislocation. I'm not an expert on Romanticism, but I kept thinking of those paintings by Caspar David Friedrich where the tiny travelers are pausing at the precipice of a mountain path and looking out at the vast, frighteningly awesome territory in the distance. There are American landscape painters who aim for the same effect, like Cole and Church and Bierstadt. There is even a book on them called American Sublime.

Anne Radcliffe, in the 1790s, is pretty early in jumping on the sublimity bandwagon. I think it's part of what makes this book so important. But that does not make it any less annoying! In fact, that was a major part of why I found the anachronisms of the book so glaring -- sublime landscape was just not part of the mental vocabulary of 16th-century ladies yet there goes Emily, mooning endlessly about about it. She also makes drawings of it, which I think is totally impossible for a woman in the 1580s. The landscape-sketching gentlewoman is a later phenomenon, I suspect part of the Romantic love of sublime landscape.

OK, now I will stop lecturing...

I actually also imagine the landscapes in Radcliffe's books to be Friedrich-like... I seems a very fitting kind of depiction of her 'sublime' areas :)

hey... don't stop lecturing. It's fascinating. The only blooper I've managed to unearth was that Valancourt sends her a message by post when she's in Venice but there wasn't any in the 16th century. I only know that cos I'm reading a history book about the 17th century at the moment too.

More lecturing!!! I certainly beats Montoni's lechering.

I can't believe Valancourt is able to cut a poem of 16 lines into a stone postern using a pen-knife (not sure what a postern it, but if made of stone, it can't have been an easy task) - and that Emily recognizes his handwriting!

The writing often reminds me of the romantic novels by Goethe, but the added anachronisms and errors give it an entertaining value which the humour-free Goethe books don't have. Has anyone here read Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship yet?
Yes, it is all a bit like German romanticism. Must have been great times with the peasants continually singing and dancing. I should ask my neighbour farmers when and why this nice tradition has stopped.

Edit: only 5% left - it takes this book very long to come to an end. Can some banditto please kill Valancourt on the remining pages?

Deern, I have not read Wilhelm Meister but your description makes my heart quake. Anne Radcliffe without the entertainment value?

I think I am about where you are, and the more it becomes inevitable that she will be reunited with the slimey Valancourt, the more my heart sinks. Why not nice DuPont? A perfectly good fellow, unlikely to gamble away the family fortune, completely and sincerely devoted to her, and with at least the trace of a spine? But I guess if she did the safe, sane thing, it would not be a Gothic Romance!

THAT was the big secret, so bad noone could tell Emily?

#64: I agree, DuPont was the better man.
Wilhelm Meister was brain torture. But the poems are lovely.
In "Udolpho" I skipped Emily's poems.

I surrender! I give up! No more Udolpho for me! Unless someone can really step forward and convince me otherwise, I am done. Maybe I'll pick it up later but I CAN'T STAND IT ANOTHER MINUTE! ....sorry.....

And I was just about to start :)

where did you get to ccookie?

I'm into Vol 4... yay! I've found a way to make you appreciate listening to anyone read Mysteries: just listen to redabrus read a chapter on librivox.org. After that, anything sounds good, even kittens drowning. It's given me inspiration I needed to get to the end. I do have three more chapters read by her to endure in Vol 4, but I've put my mp3 players on fast play...

> 68 John,
I stopped at Vol 3 chapter 8 ...

#69: I wish I could give you some encouragement, but at that point... Well, all secrets will be explained towards the ending. But I found that last part to be a terrible drag.

#70 I agree - no encouraging words from me either. However I never give up on a book once I've made a decent start so finished it anyway. (I have not given up on Ulysses, I'm just taking an indefinite break!)

#69 Well, you've already passed the half-way point... But yeah, still quite a bit to go, I'm afraid. And I have no real encouragement either, sometimes, if you don't like a book, you just don't like it and you can't change that...

> 71
I am taking an indefinite break ... :-)

right, possibly the worst book I've ever blogged: http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?p=3663

>74 arukiyomi: oh, John...

"If I hadn’t killed myself somewhere towards the middle of Volume 4, Udolpho’s ending would have made me vomit." and "Radcliffe’s characters are so flat, they make a piece of paper look like the Oxford English Dictionary."

I love your comments! I'll have to read some more of your blog to find out what you write when you like a book!!

I don't know whether to congratulate you on finishing it or send you a sympathy card!

#74: Very good review, you made me laugh and I agree in most of the points - although I still had more fun with this one than with Walden which is utterly humorless. Here at least for the first 2 books I could laugh about the writing and the theatrical behaviour of the characters. And I enjoyed the landscape descriptions in the first chapters (before it got too much), it was like looking at paintings in a museum. The group read certainly helped as well, and I hope to be back for The Golden Notebook.

And now I almost feel encouraged to pick up the Monk if it is so much better.

I believe that Radcliffe had way too much time on her hands. This is the result of an idle mind.

... and 500 quid in the bank up front George.

And I'll take the sympathy card ccookie!

Since I still have The Mysteries of Udolpho on my MP3 I am occasionally listening to it in the car. At the rate I am going, I will finish it in about 5 years! God, it is tedious!! But, I will keep whittling away at it.

Oh, Good Lord! I finally finished listening to the Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe which I started for the group read back in May.

What a nice little tidy package ending!

This was perhaps my worst reading experience, EVER. I know, I know, some of you loved it, but not me.

Review will follow later.