February is the shortest month on our calendar and this year it somehow slipped away from me entirely. Computer problems caused me to lose several files and some pesky health problems slowed me down. But now March has come. The days are getting longer and I hope my blog will get back on schedule.  

One of the best-kept secrets of most best seller lists is that sometimes the real bestsellers never appear on the lists. While critics choose the bestselling books of the week or the year, readers may be spending their time reading books written centuries ago. The New York Times has a careful set of criteria for its bestseller lists. The details of their criteria are not public, but the Times does not include all the books that appear in a given year. They do not include books published by religious publishers even though these attract large audiences. The Bible, for example, is a perennial best seller that never makes best seller lists. 

Ann Radcliffe was born on July 9, 1764 in London. She moved to Bath with her family a few years later. She might have attended school in Bath, although there are no records of this. She certainly grew up to be a reader. In 1787, she married William Radcliffe. Her husband was a newspaperman who encouraged his wife to read and to write. The couple had no children and Ann devoted most of her time to those activities and to travelling. Her first book was a series of travel letters.

Radcliffe’s first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dubnayne was published anonymously in 1789. The following year she wrote another book, A Sicilian Romance. Each book increased her audience and by the time she wrote her third, she began to publish under her own name. 

For her most famous book, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe received 500 pounds, while the average author in England at that time received only 10 pounds for a novel. She was soon earning far more than her husband did for his newspaper work, but the difference did not seem to interfere with their relationship. They remained a devoted couple.  

Even though Radcliffe was a successful writer, she did not publish a great many books. While her books continued to be read and discussed by readers and other authors, she herself stopped writing quite early in her career. Her audience, however did not stop reading. 

Radcliffe was the most popular writer in England during the early nineteenth century. She was admired by both Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. And her influence did not end at England’s shore. Even the great Russian novelist, Dostoyevsky, read and admired her books. 

You might want to try reading a few of Ann Radcliffe’s books too. They are easily available online and in libraries and bookstores. Although they are not on our best seller lists these days, they are a refreshing reminder that we can still enjoy books written long before we became readers. Not all books lose their charm as time goes by. Why not try one of them and find out what Jane Austen read before she started writing books of her own?