The Italian , the Other Marquis Vivaldi, and the New Radcliffe

The Inquisition apprehended Count Cagliostro in Rome in early 1790 along with a confederate—the Marquis Vivaldi, who was chased down by the authorities and lynched in Venice in 1791. These events, covered extensively in the press, were back in the news in 1795, in a mediated form, with the English translation of Schiller’s The Ghost-Seer . Did Radcliffe expect her readers to be familiar with this material, so that the historical Vivaldi and her fictional one become identifiable? This essay argues that the affirmative is the only feasible answer and that as a result the standard view of Radcliffe, as a conservative figure carefully detached from the political upheaval of the times, is no longer tenable. What emerges instead is a literary artist with her finger on the pulse of both the latest in the novel, and the most recent political developments in Europe.