Walter Scott - Various Quotations

On Ann Radcliffe: 'She has uniformly (except in her first effort) selected for her place of action the south of Europe, where human passions, like the weeds of the climate, are supposed to attain portentous growth under the fostering sun; which abounds with ruined monuments of antiquity … and where feudal tyranny and Catholic superstitions still continue to exercise their sway over the slave and bigot [...] These circumstances are skilfully selected, to give probability to events which could not, without great violation of truth, be represented as having taken place in England. (Lives of the Novelists (1825) reprinted in Victor Sage, ed., The Gothick Novel, London, 1990, p.59; quoted in Ann Cahill, ‘Irish Folk Tales and Supernatural Literature: Patrick Kennedy and Sheridan Le Fanu’, That Other World: The Supernatual and Fantastic in Irish Literature [Transactions of the Princess Grace Irish Library] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe: 1998).

See also under Maria Edgeworth.