Special Collections
Book of the Month, June 2010
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: A Highland Story
Ann Radcliffe
4th edn
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1811
[S.L.] I [Radcliffe – 1789]
Best known for The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) was the dominant romance writer of the 1790s. The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne is her first novel, and is one of five to have been published during her lifetime. The authoress wrote it at the age of 25, two years after her marriage, to occupy herself during the evenings when her husband was away reporting for parliament. It first appeared anonymously in 1789 under the imprint of T. Hookham, the proprietor of a circulating library on London’s Old Bond Street, and was not a hit. ‘This work is pregnant with events that have no foundation in Nature, and will amuse such Readers only, as are fond of the Story of Jack the Giant Killer, and such wonderful performances’ stated the Genius of Albion in January, 1790, while the reviewer for the Critical Review of November 1789 remarked acidly about Radcliffe’s depiction of Scottish manners and costume: ‘He [sic] seems to be unacquainted with both’. Its popularity grew with the increased taste for the Gothic. Radcliffe’s name first appeared on the third edition.
The novel is a short one: in this edition, 280 duodecimo pages, with 24 lines per page and wide margins. The story is set in north-east Scotland, ‘in the most romantic part of the Highalnds’. It starts twelve years after Malcolm, ‘proud, oppressive, revengeful’ has slain the noble Earl of Athlin. The Earl’s son Osbert attempts to avenge his father’s death, assisted by an attractive peasant, Alleyn (who turns out to be another usurped nobleman and Malcolm’s nephew). Malcolm captures and imprisons them when they attack his home, Dunbayne Castle, and almost blackmails Osbert’s beautiful sister Mary into marrying him. After various vicissitudes and narrow escapes, Malcolm is killed, and the story ends with Alleyn marrying Mary and Osbert marrying Alleyn’s sister Laura. The work contains the features which were to characterise all her works: descriptions of picturesque landscape, interspersion of the narrative with poetry; coincidence; the theme of the importance of control and restraint, with the uncontrolled passionate nature of the villain; the introduction of fear (balanced with pleasure) and suspense; the ‘explained supernatural’. It set its authoress on the path to become a formative influence on the Gothic novel.
This copy of the fourth edition, recently purchased, joins first editions of The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian and the posthumous Gaston de Blondeville in the Sterling Library of first and fine editions of English literature.
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