The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe's fourth and most popular novel, follows the fortunes of Emily St. Aubert, who suffers, among other misadventures, the death of her father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle and the machinations of an Italian brigand. Often cited as the archetypal Gothic novel, The movel, along with Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest, plays a prominent role in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, in which an impressionable young woman, after reading Radcliffe's novel, comes to see her friends and acquaintances as Gothic villains and victims with amusing results.