Little is known about Ann Radcliffe's life. This fact surprises me as she was instrumental in pioneering the gothic genre and influenced countless authors after her, yet it is suggested by history that records and papers and journals that may have helped biographers to decipher her life were lost very soon after she passed away. The information that we do have about her and her books is laid out beautifully in Deborah D. Rogers's book, Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography. Ann was born in London, England in the middle of the year 1764 and was the only child of a haberdasher and tradesman, William Ward, and a pious and loving woman, Ann Oates Ward. The family was connected, familialy and otherwise, to several influential people and it is suggested (though remains ambiguous as to its certainty) that one of these influential people (her uncle) could have contributed to her education when her family moved to Bath. Ann was married to William Radcliffe on 15 January 1787 and the couple moved to England. Their marriage was by all accounts happy. They had no children, and in Rogers's book she suggests that this may have been according to Ann and William's own will when she writes, "Although childbirth dominated women's culture, the biological dangers of pregnancy in an era before the introduction of antiseptic procedures and the medicalization of childbirth may have persuaded many women who were serious about writing to remain childless, if not single" (Rogers, 4). Details such as this are not entirely relevant to Ann's accomplishments as writer, but it highlights the fact that little is known about her and the reasons behind much of what happened in her life.

Even in the midst of Radcliffe's fame as an authoress, she lived a retired, reclusive life, and after the death of her parents in 1799 and 1781, she did not publish any more books. Some accounts attribute this fact to the criticism that she and her books received, but as we will see in a moment, there was plenty of praise for her writing and she was widely celebrated as were her novels. Others (especially during and shortly after Radcliffe's time) spread rumors that she was mad. Due to insufficient biographical sources, we cannot know for sure, but we know that she remained fairly recluse until she succumbed to both stomach and respiratory problems and passed away 7 February, 1823.

As for her literary works, they were received in various ways. It appears that the her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, was widely thought to have been written by a man and was received with quite mixed reactions ranging from "imaginative and commendable" to "inaccurate, insipid, and disgustful". This, however, did not deter Ann. In fact she often took criticism to heart and incorporated changed to her novels. By the time she wrote and published The Italian (possibly her most famous novel), the reviews were much more widespread and much more generally positive. Her works have inspired many of the great writers of her generation as well as those that followed.