At the beginning of the 19th century, the novel had already become a very popular form of entertainment among the middle-class reading public, especially among women that looked for ways of amusing themselves. The development of circulating libraries, moreover, also spread novel to the lower classes of society. However, the institution of libraries had negative consequences for the development of fiction: the quantity of books that was produced to meet the increasing demand for new novels included some of very poor quality.
The genre of fiction soon divided into good and bad literature, a division that still exists today and that also meant a split into good and bad writers.
The fiction production of this period confirmed the novel capacity to assume many different forms, such as gothic fiction (Ann Radcliff and Mary Shelley), historical novel (Walter Scott) [I 1] [I 2] [E1] [S ] [F] and ironical novel (Jane Austen) [E1] [E2] [S1] .
Let’s focus on Gothic Fiction. Ann Radcliff’s [S 1] [S 2] [E2] [E3] [I] novels, such as The mysteries of Udolpho, but also all the gothic novels in general, are built around complicated plots and a series of dreadful and terrible experiences. They are set in wild places and sometimes in isolated castles. The reader becomes involved in the sufferings of the heroine because she is pursued by a villain and the final happy end always comes as a relief.
The taste for strong sensations, typical of gothic fiction, can be found in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [S 1] [S 2] [E2] [E3] [I1] [E4]. This time, however, horror is neither supernatural nor mysterious: it’s created by man., by an overreacher scientist that wants to go beyond the limits of knowledge.
