“As like As Peppermint Water is to Good French Brandy”: Ann Radcliffe and Hester Lynch Salusbury (Thrale) Piozzi

Abstract

Although Ann Radcliffe never travelled to the “warm South”, most of her novels feature Italy and its landscape as their principal setting. Indeed, not having participated in the “magic procession” of the grand tour did not prevent her from depicting an extremely romantic and sensory version of Italian scenery and characters. Writers such as Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, a pioneer of women writers’ versions of the grand tour narrative, who penned her own Observations and Reflections (1789) as a travel book and not as a collection of letters or journals, provided Radcliffe's novels with descriptions of Italy which she took almost word for word from Piozzi. Their appreciation was mutual. An indefatigable conversationalist and diary writer, Piozzi's favourite topic of conversation—literature—included a discussion on Radcliffe's novels in her correspondence with her friend Penelope Pennington. In turn, Radcliffe deliberately decided to borrow her primary materials for The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) from Piozzi's innovative narrative, precisely—as this essay aims to demonstrate—to support Piozzi's personal experience as a social and literary outcast from London society, as well as celebrate her eccentric personality and her groundbreaking contribution to the literature of the grand tour.