(_b_) =Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823).= This lady was the most popular of the terror novelists, and published quite a large number of books that followed a fairly regular plan. Among such were her _A Sicilian Romance_ (1790), _The Romance of the Forest_ (1791), and the most popular of them all, _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ (1794). Her stories took on almost a uniform plot, involving mysterious manuscripts, haunted castles, clanking chains, and cloaked and saturnine strangers. At the end of all the horrors Mrs. Radcliffe rather spoils the effect by giving away the secrets of them, and revealing the fact that the terrors were only illusions after all. Nowadays the novels appear tame, but they showed the way to a large number of other writers, for they were fresh to the public of their time. (_c_) =Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818).= Lewis is perhaps the crudest of the terror school, and only one book of his, _The Monk_ (1795), is worth recording. Lewis, who is lavish with his horrors, does not try to explain them. His imagination is grimmer and fiercer than that of any of the other writers of the same class, and his book is probably the “creepiest” of its kind. =5. Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831).= This novelist is the most considerable of the sentimental school, who took Sterne for their master. His best-known work is _The Man of Feeling_ (1771), in which maudlin sentiment has free play. To his contemporaries Mackenzie was known as “the Man of Feeling.” =6. Frances Burney (1752–1840)=, whose married name was =Madame d’Arblay=, is rather an important figure, for she exercised a considerable influence on her age. Her diaries and letters are clever and informative, and her two best novels, _Evelina_ (1778) and _Cecilia_ (1782), are lively and acute representations of fashionable society. Johnson, with his heavy jocularity, called her a “character-monger,” meaning that her chief effects were obtained in the portraying of character. In the construction of _Evelina_ she returns to the clumsy letter-method of Richardson, but she has a wit of an agreeably acid flavor. She is no mean predecessor of Jane Austen. (See p. 354.) EDWARD GIBBON (1737–94)