Ghost Writers: Radcliffiana and the Russian Gothic Wave

Ann Radcliffe’s novels were extremely popular in early nineteenth -century Russia. Publication of her work in Russian translation propelled the so-called gothic wave of 1800-10. Yet, many of the works Radcliffe was known for in Russia were not written by her; rather, they were works by others that were attributed to Radcliffe. This article traces the publication and translation histories of Radcliffiana on the Russian book market of 1800- 20. Building on JoEllen DeLucia’s concept of a “corporate Radcliffe” in the anglophone world, this article proposes a Russian corporate Radcliffe. Identifying, classifying, and analysing the provenance of Russian corporate Radcliffe works reveals insight into the transnational circulation of texts and the role of copyright law within it, the nature of the early nineteenth-century Russian book market, the rise of popular reading and advertising in Russia, and the gendered nature of critical discourse at this time. The Russian corporate Radcliffe assures the legacy and influence of Radcliffe in later Russian literature and culture, although a Radcliffe that represents much more than just the English author. Exploring the Russian corporate Radcliffe expands our understanding of early nineteenth-century Russian literary history through specific case studies that demonstrate the significant role played by both women writers and translation, an aspect of this history that is often overlooked.

Radcliffe's particular style of gothic fiction came to define many of the genre's conventions. Her novels are mostly set in temporally distant, exotic, and potentially sublime places -many in Italy -and feature innocent heroines who must contend with wicked guardians, murderers and thieves, the supernatural, kidnappings, and other tribulations. In Udolpho, Radcliffe's most well-known and influential novel, heroine Emily St Aubert is driven from her home, orphaned, robbed, imprisoned by an unscrupulous guardian, and set upon by bandits, yet also falls into reveries as she travels through the beautiful countryside of southern France, the Alps, and Italy. In a letter to his friend Iakov Polonskii, Dostoevskii admits that his dream of travelling to Italy is grounded in his early reading of these works.
How many times have I dreamed, since childhood, of visiting Italy. Ever since Radcliffe's novels, which I had already read before I was eight, various Alfonsos, Catarinas and Lucias have been imprinted on my brain. And  Dostoevskii's statement reveals more than his love of Radcliffe, however. It also reveals a peculiar knock-on effect of Radcliffe's unprecedented popularity. Although Dostoevskii associates these characters with Radcliffe, none of them appear in Radcliffe's novels, as Boris Tikhomirov has argued. Rather, they are all from "pseudo-Radcliffe" [psevdo -Radklif] novels, to use Vadim Vatsuro's term (2002: 55). "Pseudo-Radcliffe" has come to describe the substantial body of gothic novels attributed to Ann Radcliffe that appeared on the Russian book market in the early nineteenth century, but which were actually the work of other authors. Book catalogues from the period 1800-20 reveal twenty-two unique works attributed to Radcliffe (who had written only five unique novels by 1820, one of which did not appear in Russian translation until much later). These works were published under Radcliffe's name because her name alone was enough to sell novels. Radcliffe's enormous popularity and disappearance from public life following the publication of The Italian in 1797 created a situation that fostered the production of pseudo-Radcliffe novels as demand existed, but no supply and also no international copyright law.
In this article I will use the term "Russian corporate Radcliffe" to refer to the Russian Radcliffe corpus -that is, Radcliffe's original works as well as the pseudo-Radcliffe works attributed to her and related critical and public discourse. Here I rely on the concept of "corporate Radcliffe," coined by JoEllen DeLucia (2020: 95), which, in DeLucia's work, refers to the large body of texts published in England that were associated with Radcliffe but not necessarily written by her. The Russian corporate Radcliffe is different from DeLucia's vision of the English body of texts in that it exists not only because of economic circumstances and marketing, but also as the result of a rich history of translation and transnational cultural exchange.
The Russian corporate Radcliffe corpus presents intriguing case studies, each a microhistory that provides insight into the transnational circulation of texts, the nature of the early nineteenth-century Russian book market, the rise of popular reading and advertising in Russia, and the gendered nature of critical discourse at this time. In analysing these case studies, this article will explore the phenomenon of transnational and transcultural literary ghostwriting and its role in creating Radcliffe's Russian identity, which influenced Russian literature for decades after her final novel appeared posthumously in 1826. Examining these publishing microhistories and the curious situations that, at times, resulted from them, reveals that Ann Radcliffe's reach in Russia goes well beyond just Radcliffe, the English author who wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho and a handful of other titles. Rather, through the body of corporate Radcliffe and critical and popular discourse surrounding it, Radcliffe in Russia became an entity that represents both the entire gothic genre of writing and latent anxieties about women stepping out of the bounds of their proscribed roles within society.

Translation and the Transnational Gothic Wave
Gothic novels were not a Russian invention, nor were they considered to be "good literature" by critics. Yet, they were extremely popular -one of the first examples of mass-produced fiction -and significantly influenced the way reading culture and literary fiction developed in nineteenth-century Russia. The gothic wave, which had been gradually building across Europe in the 1780s, hit Russia in the early 1790s with the Russian translations of Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron (1792) The first Russian edition of The Recess included a description that spoke to the popularity of the work as well as its translation history: "Translated into French from the 12th English edition, and from French into Russian." These translated gothic novels were successful in the 1790s, but they were a prelude to the decade known as the "Russian gothic wave," 1800-10 (Vatsuro 2002: iii). This was a period of intense literary translation as gothic novels were imported from England, France, and Germany, often in French translation, and then quickly rendered into Russian to meet the public's demand.
The late eighteenth-century Russian book market differed significantly from its counterparts in England and France. The English and French markets had been in place for well over a century and the trend for gothic novels in the 1780s was facilitated by a robust network of publishers, booksellers, circulating libraries, subscription libraries, and literary journals. 4 However, this context also shaped gothic fiction. In England, a 1771 change in copyright law that negated copyrights older than 28 years led publishers, who could no longer rely on the profits from their back catalogues, to seek out new talent with more urgency. 5 The result was a sharp rise in the number of individual writers being published as well as better payment for authors whose works were likely to sell well. Following Radcliffe's first best-seller, ISSN: 2632-4253 (online) 156 The Romance of the Forest, she received an unheard-of £500 for The Mysteries of Udolpho and, following a bidding war, an even more lavish £800 for The Italian. 6 In comparison, in 1803 a then-unknown Jane Austen received £10 -a more typical fee for the time -in exchange for the rights to her first novel, Susan, the Radcliffe parody later published as Northanger Abbey (1818). 7 In addition to finding new talent, the market for translations boomed. There was no international copyright agreement in place governing the rights to translations. As a result, French translators "plundered" -to use Angela Wright's phrasing (2014: 222) -the works of Ann Radcliffe and other English gothic novelists, which proved exceedingly popular on the French book market. 8 In 1797, five Radcliffe novels were published in French translation: The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, A Sicilian Romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The Italian. The Italian, the story of the orphan Ellena's forbidden romance with young nobleman Vivaldi and the challenges the pair face at the hands of an evil Marchesa, a wicked monk, the Inquisition, and various other obstacles, was published that year in two different translations, one by Mary Gay for Lepetit and a second by André Morellet for Denné. The mass translation and publication of Radcliffe's entire oeuvre to date followed on the success of the first French edition of The Romance of the Forest, the story of a mysterious woman named Adeline who takes shelter with a family staying in a ruined abbey while also being pursued by a villainous Marquis, which was published in François Soulès's translation by Denné in 1794. This translation boom was supported by both popular demand and a large supply of translators. Translation of popular fiction provided needed income for educated nobles and academics who had lost their fortunes or positions in the Revolution; the translator of Udolpho was the Countess Victorine de Chastenay-Lanty while Morellet, the translator of The Italian, was a well-known economist and philosophe who had previously contributed to the Encyclopédie, but who had lost his pension when the Académie française was dissolved in 1793. 9 In 1798, public demand resulted in a second edition of Soulès's translation of The Romance of the Forest as well as two more editions of Morellet's translation of The Italian, which were published by Maradan, one as part of a collected works edition in multiple volumes.

The Rise of Pseudo-Radcliffe
As Radcliffe's popularity grew, these editions began to publicise that she was the author of other works. The sequence of publication can be traced through the title pages of the 1797 translations: Gay's translation of The Italian proclaimed the work to be by the author of The 10 The multitude of translators and publishers, marketing techniques, and Radcliffe editions that appear in short succession on the French book market underscore its flexibility and scope. 11 Unlike the English and French book markets, the Russian market was relatively new, having formed in large part following Catherine II's granting of printing privileges to private presses in the 1770s. This expansion of printing into the private sphere, albeit still regulated by the state, enabled the growth of a book market; in the mid-1770s there were just fifteen booksellers in Russia, but by the 1790s there were fifty, and by the turn of the nineteenth century there were hundreds. 12 The introduction of gothic fiction to Russia coincided with both this sharp rise in the market's capacity and the further loosening of censorship and regulation of private printing following Alexander I's ascension to the throne in 1801. 13 As more private printing presses were established, literary journals flourished as well. The demand for reading material rose significantly faster than Russian writers were able to produce it and translations dominated the market at this time. 14 The first Russian readers of Radcliffe were undoubtedly reading French translations imported from abroad (Vatsuro 2002: 114 10 The Tomb will be discussed in more detail later in this article. 11 Darnton gives an excellent overview of the eighteenth-century French book market, both legal and pirated (2021: 45-58). 12 On the development of the eighteenth-century Russian book market, see Marker ([1985Marker ([ ] 2014. 13 On the expansion and trends of the Russian book market in the early nineteenth century, see Tosi (2006: 33-44). 14 On the Russian translation market, see Tosi (2006: 91-3). 15 On Radcliffe's original translation into Russian, see Vatsuro (2002: 116-17 16 They were extremely popular, as demonstrated by the quick succession in which Radcliffe's novels were published, as well as the vast array of imitators and pseudo-Radcliffe works that appeared after. Given Radcliffe's popularity and her scant bibliography, it is not surprising that the vast majority of titles under Radcliffe's name in the Russian State Library catalogue are pseudo-Radcliffe works. Some of these novels are well known and their attribution to Radcliffe would confuse anyone familiar with early eighteenth-and nineteenth-century gothic novels, such as The Monk, or the Pernicious Consequences of Ardent Passions [Monakh, ili Pagubnyia sledstviia pylkikh strastei] by Matthew Lewis. The Monk recounts the scandalous history of a monk called Ambrosio who, tempted by a demon called Matilda, inadvertently makes a deal with the devil in order to satisfy his carnal appetites. The Monk's appearance in the catalogue under Radcliffe's authorship is particularly surprising because of Lewis's novel's notoriety and the fact that its aesthetic style is commonly opposed to Radcliffe's (including by Radcliffe herself). 17 Radcliffe's own novels tend to have a sentimental aesthetic that enables the reader's connection with her pensive heroines, even if the works include frightening scenes, wicked foes, and an assortment of spooky props like a skeleton in a chest or a wax effigy of a corpse. Lewis's novel, on the other hand, is written in a style intended to shock readers. In one particularly graphic scene, for example, a woman who has been confined to a dungeon with her dead child recounts the way her fingers, embracing the child, pushed through the corpse's rotting flesh and became tangled with worms. In another scene, the devil reveals to the monk Ambrosio that, not only has he committed murder and rape, but also incest, since his victim was also secretly his sister. The Russian translators of Lewis's novel, Ivan Pavlenkov and Ivan Rosliakov, worked from the 1797 French translation of the text, which was anonymously attributed. Radcliffe's name was likely added to improve sales during 1802, the year of Radcliffe's explosive popularity in Russia (Vatsuro 2002: 210). The practice of translators or publishers adding Radcliffe's name to otherwise anonymous texts is common among the pseudo-Radcliffe novels. Pavlenkov went on to translate the luridly titled Albert's Castle, or the Animated Skeleton [Zamok Al'berta, ili Dvizhushchiisia skelet], a work of unknown authorship, which also came out under Radcliffe's name. However, the practice resulted in curious inconsistencies as additional works were translated and published. In Russia, The Monk was widely known as Radcliffe (1798) has a particularly curious history in this regard. The novel was published anonymously in 1798, although Lathom went on to have a career as a popular author under his own name afterwards. Famously, The Midnight Bell appeared in Austen's Northanger Abbey as one of the so-called Northanger Canon, the list of gothic novels Isabella Thorpe recommends heroine Catherine Morland. For decades, this list, including The Midnight Bell, was considered by scholars to be largely fake, a collection of lurid titles Austen had fabricated for comedic effect. 19 But research into the transnational afterlives of gothic works demonstrates that the work was both widely available and even parodied by other writers of the time outside of Great Britain. In the same year of its English publication, the novel was translated into French, also anonymously. Two versions of the novel, both translated from the French, appeared on the Russian book market in 1802. One of these, the St Petersburg translation, was done by Rosliakov and attributed to an anonymous author, as Lathom's novel had been in its original printing. The other, the Moscow translation, was anonymously translated and appeared under Radcliffe's authorship. The translations both appeared around the same time and clearly used the same French source text (both indicate that they are translations from the French and only one French translation existed at this time). Their existence highlights the lack of copyright law in effect in Russia in the early nineteenth century; the first legal statutes relating to copyright were introduced only in 1828. Before then, publishers were unmotivated to pay much for new work and translation was in high demand, but paid extremely poorly. The pseudo-Radcliffe Moscow translation of The Midnight Bell went through multiple editions, printed first in 1802, then in 1803, and again in 1816. Its popularity can be shown through its appearance in later works. In 1823, the playwright Boris Fedorov included a merchant selling a copy of The Midnight Bell in his play Captain Gromilov while in 1833 gothic novelist Orest Somov included the work as reading material for his heroine in the story "Mommy and Sonny" [Matushka i synok], a gothic spoof.

The Curious Histories of "Radcliffe Translation"
Radcliffe's name was a significant marketing benefit as the attribution of The Monk and the afterlife of The Midnight Bell demonstrates. The history of another pseudo-Radcliffe novel, Rodolphe, or the Cavern of Death in the Deep Forest [Rodol'f, ili Peshchera smerti v dremuchem lesu], demonstrates how easily others' authorship could be attributed to Radcliffe. The English original, The Cavern of Death. A Moral Tale, was published anonymously in 1794. Its French translation was published by Maradan in 1799, also anonymously. The first Russian edition (1801), which was published before Radcliffe's works began to appear in Russian translation, also had anonymous authorship on the frontispiece. In 1806, this same Russian translation of The Cavern of Death was reprinted by two different publishers, however, and both reprints were attributed to "Mrs Radcliffe." Attributed authorship is a fluid category on the early nineteenth-century Russian book market. Adding Radcliffe's name to the later printings of The Cavern of Death was a strategy to improve its sales, but other authors' names were invoked in the process of selling the text. A bookseller advertising new titles for sale in a This is the first work attributed to Lewis to appear in Russia. The 1805 reprint of The Monk was also attributed to Radcliffe. 19 This view was put forward by Victorian critic George Saintsbury (1891: 19), among others, and refuted by book collector Michael Sadleir (1927: 91-106), who tracked down the full group of novels.  The "translator" who found these sources and the fact that the collection proclaims that they were "translated from English" demonstrate the level of subterfuge that some were willing to carry out in the name of profit.  In reality, the novel was written by Wuiet and deliberately published as a fake Radcliffe translation. The Russian edition closely followed the French source, down to the subtitle "A historical novel." Similarly, The Hermit of the Secret Tomb appeared in French in 1816 and was marketed as a translation of Ann Radcliffe. In fact, the "translator," Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, was the author (and went on to publish a number of gothic novels and crime novels under his own name afterwards). As with Wuiet's novel, the Russian translation closely followed the French source down to the subtitle. The French translation of The Tomb was marketed as a posthumous work by the author of "L'abbaye de Ste.-Claire, des Mystères d'Udolphe, de L'Italien, etc." although it was neither by Ann Radcliffe nor was she deceased. As a result, the Russian translation included this same note on its frontispiece: "A work by Mrs Radcliffe, published after her death" (Grobnitsa 1802).

Maria and Count M-v and
The provenance of the original remains a mystery, although the French National Library catalogue entry includes a note indicating that the text was most likely written by its "translator," Hector Chaussier et Bizet. In 1812, The Mysteries of the Black Tower was published in Moscow in Russian translation. As with many of the others, the source was a French translation of an English novel: John Palmer, Jr.'s The Mystery of the Black Tower (1796). The Mystery of the Black Tower recounts the story of a medieval peasant called Leonard whose true love Emma is kidnapped and imprisoned in the haunted Black Tower and the various adventures he has along the way to rescue her; in the end Leonard discovers his true identity. While some episodes are amusing, the novel as a whole suffers from flat characters and a disjointed narrative that is constantly interrupted by digressions. Unlike many other pseudo-Radcliffe novels, the provenance of The Mysteries of the Black Tower was publicly questioned, in particular in an April 1812 review of the novel. In his review, the critic N. gives an overview of its various entertaining plot elements, but concludes that "the novel is so stupid that … Mrs Radcliffe never thought to write it" (310-11). He continues: The title says she composed it, but our publishers often use such tricks to lure money from simple-minded admirers of Mrs Radcliffe. Although she has already died and all her writings have been translated into Russian, new novels are constantly being published and advertised as a new work of Mrs Radcliffe. It can be expected that, in time, the translator of Mysteries of the Black Tower will translate some other novel, calling it the Mysteries of the Yellow House, and the publisher, who has paid two rubles per five and a half sheets [listy] for the novel, will declare that it was composed by the glorious Madame Radcliffe, and, if you like, swear that she definitely lived in a yellow house and that the translator was very briefly acquainted with her there. The reviewer makes several points here that are relevant for the purposes of this article. N. observes that the pseudo-Radcliffe novel is aimed at "simple-minded admirers" of Radcliffe who are willing to buy any book with her name on the title page. In describing the practice of adding Radcliffe's name to a work to sell it, the reviewer suggests that this is common knowledge. Yet, N. is mistaken to say that Radcliffe is dead -a belief stemming from the 1802 Russian publication of The Tomb, which was falsely marketed as a posthumous novel. N. concludes that faux Radcliffe novels stem from a market demand for new Radcliffe works, but no supply because of Radcliffe's death. The satirical speculation about the hypothetical publisher's attempt to authenticate the text by creating a relationship between translator and author is intriguing as well. Alleging this kind of personal relationship takes the subterfuge one degree further: first the lie about Radcliffe's authorship, then the lie about Radcliffe's acquaintance with the translator. With this observation, N. is also poking fun at the idea that a work of literature should be authenticated because it supposedly reflects the author's experience and, by extension, laughing at the gullibility of the reader. N.'s comments underscore two important points that analysing Russian corporate Radcliffe texts reveal: that pseudo-Radcliffe novels occurred in such volume because of the gap left in the market when Radcliffe retreated from public life in 1797 and that the tactics, enabled by the absence of international copyright law, used by publishers and translators were sometimes extreme.

Reading Corporate Radcliffe
Corporate Radcliffe flourished because of the entertaining thrills readers associated with Radcliffe's name. Radcliffe's novels are praised for her careful attention to her aesthetic philosophy and narrative craft, but she gained fame and readers because of the gothic suspense and thrills she incorporated into her texts. When Austen's heroine Catherine Morland and her friend Isabella Thorpe sit down to discuss The Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey, they are delighted not by Radcliffe's masterful engagement with the sublime, but by the trappings of gothic meant to titillate readers: "I am just got to the black veil." "Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?" "Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me -I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina's skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it." (1818: II.68) Although Austen's readers are fictional, their articulation of the experience of reading Radcliffe's novels echoes that of historical Russian readers who appreciate the thrill of mystery, suspense, and terror. Ekaterina Sushkova, a memoirist, describes finding some volumes by Ann Radcliffe on a shelf in her aunt's library. She recalls reading them: "With what freezing of my heart I learned the theory of apparitions -sometimes it seemed to me that I saw them -they caused me fear, but some kind of pleasant fear" ([1812-41] 1928: 63). This "pleasant fear" recalls Catherine and Isabella's conversation. Mikhail Dmitriev, a poet, critic, and memoirist, remembers reading gothic fiction in his youth: The fashionable novels of the time were those of Mesdames de Genlis and Radcliffe. I didn't like the delicate works of the former as they always seemed saccharine, but my aunts shed a lot of sensitive tears over them. But the horrors and secrets of Madame Radcliffe fascinated me, like all the readers of that time. ([1810] 1998: 52) Dmitriev contrasts de Genlis, a French sentimental writer, with Radcliffe's "fascinating" secrets and horrors. Aleksandr Nikitenko, a critic, censor, and academic, similarly recalls a youthful fascination with gothic novels: The novels were largely in translation and mostly bad, without the slightest hint of psychological development in the characters. They fascinated me exclusively with romantic adventures and the fiery feelings depicted in them. With what trembling I penetrated into dark dungeons following Ann Radcliffe…! But I gained little from this course of reading: … first, the fact that for a long while afterwards I was afraid to stay alone in a dark room, and second that, meeting a new woman, I rushed to elevate her into a pearl of creation and fall in love with her. ([1804-24] 1904: I.53) Nikitenko mentions the poor quality of the translated novels and their lack of psychological development. Yet, his reading still contains an experiential quality; like Sushkova, he is drawn into the world of the text and has a physiological response. Austen's readers are clearly reading Udolpho, but the delightful thrills Isabella and Catherine describe are those of gothic suspense more broadly, not specifically from Radcliffe. They just happen to be reading Radcliffe. This conversation in Northanger Abbey additionally introduces the so-called Northanger canon, Isabella's recommended gothic reading list, which includes several titles actually published under Radcliffe's name in Russia. Similarly, these memoirs by early nineteenth-century Russian readers might be describing the experience of reading pseudo-Radcliffe, or Radcliffe, or both. These microhistories and memoirs point to the need for a broader definition of Radcliffe, one that DeLucia's concept of corporate Radcliffe provides.
DeLucia theorises corporate Radcliffe in the English context. Her concept refers to "an authorship that blends the known output of Ann Radcliffe with anonymous Minerva novels and the productions of the lesser-known proto-feminist writer and memoirist Mary Anne Radcliffe" (2020: 95). This conceptualisation of Radcliffe renders her not a single author, but, rather, a much larger entity encompassing the authentic Radcliffe as well as a multiplicity of experiences and understandings of the works by and attributed to her. DeLucia uses the example of the Minerva Press (1790-1820), a publishing business founded by William Lane that was known for publishing imitative gothic and sentimental novels. Although the reputation of the Minerva Press was poor, it was nonetheless popular and grew to dominate the novel publishing industry. Because the Minerva Press is associated with gothic novels and Radcliffe was the most popular gothic novelist, the two are linked together. However, Radcliffe never published with the Minerva Press (although two of the Russian pseudo-Radcliffe novels were originally Minerva Press novels: The Animated Skeleton and The Mystery of the Black Tower). 22 22 Lane's successor A. K. Newman issued some Radcliffe reprints decades after their initial publication. The Minerva Press, in its final year, published an edition of A Sicilian Romance (1820). See DeLucia (2020: 106n1).
Instead, as DeLucia argues, the Minerva Press began to find ways to generate profit from Radcliffe's name and reputation even without legal rights to her catalogue. One method was "conflating Radcliffes by omitting first names and relying on an indeterminate Mrs Radcliffe or in title pages combining the work and identities of different Radcliffes" (DeLucia 2020: 102). For DeLucia, understanding a "corporate Radcliffe privileges the textual affinities and associations created by publishers and scholars as rich transtemporal and living networks that exceed individual authors, their nations and their historical contexts" (2020: 105).
The Russian corporate Radcliffe looks different than DeLucia's corporate Radcliffe, which is grounded in the English context. Russian corporate Radcliffe must consider the four authentic Radcliffe novels published in Russia, the eighteen documented pseudo-Radcliffe works (and however many more must exist), the French source texts, the English source texts, critical discourse surrounding Radcliffe, and popular discourse about Radcliffe. As this article has demonstrated, digging into the background and history of even one Russian pseudo-Radcliffe translation opens up a multitude of other, related histories. For example, in gothic studies criticism, Matthew Lewis is often juxtaposed with Ann Radcliffe. However, considering corporate Radcliffe from the Russian context reveals Lewis's surprising connections to Radcliffe as well as the way Radcliffe's publication history in Russia shaped Lewis's Russian career.
Corporate Radcliffe also encompasses criticism of Radcliffe and pseudo-Radcliffe. In Russian criticism, Radcliffe's novels often came under fire. Whereas in the excerpt from the review of The Mysteries of the Black Tower the author, N., criticises readers for believing such low-quality writing to be Radcliffe's, others critique Radcliffe's writing for being too violent, unfeminine, or unnatural. Many of these critiques are gendered in nature. For example, in this excerpt, Vladimir Izmailov, using the pseudonym O.O.O., comments on Radcliffe's 'unwomanly' imagination.
The Englishwoman Radcliffe dedicated her pen to the most terrifying fantasies, such as could be contrived not by the heart of a woman but only by the imagination of the most passionate fanatic. We can only hope that the English Muses, having terrified us for a time with the wild horrors of Radcliffe's imagination, will soon charm us with pleasant descriptions in the style of Marmontel. ([1804] 1903: 243) 23 Here Izmailov is not discussing one work, but, rather, the body of corporate Radcliffe, all of which he assumes to be written by Radcliffe Readers familiar with Radcliffe's original five novels will be confused by this poem. It lays out many gothic conventions, but only the beginning is recognisable in Radcliffe's narrative world. The other elements, like the dragons, griffins, and so on belong to "corporate Radcliffe." Somov, familiar mainly with the corporate Radcliffe works published in Russia and not distinguishing between authentic and pseudo-Radcliffe, conflates both. His poem thus describes the Russian Radcliffe.

Conclusion
The Russian Radcliffe is a combination of texts, experiences, and attitudes that transcend borders and languages. This Radcliffe collapses a decade's worth of publishing into a single year, or draws out a few short years' worth of publications into decades. This Radcliffe is a woman writer who has a reputation for violating tradition and the status quo through her scandalous and risqué novels. This Radcliffe is the work of a multitude of authors, translators, publishers, critics, and readers over the course of half a century and beyond. The latest Russian pseudo-Radcliffe novel I found, Louisa, or the Dungeon of the Lyon Castle [Luiza, ili Podzemel'e Lionskago zamka] published in 1819, presents an intriguing opportunity for speculation. The work purports to be translated from French and no translator is credited. However, the work also does not correspond to any French, German, or English gothic novel I could find. It is possible that this Radcliffe is an anonymous Russian "translator" who is consciously authoring the text as Radcliffe's. The other twenty-one Russian corporate Radcliffe texts I found clearly map to French or English source texts, and their provenance through translation -or, in the case of Ozerov's "translation" of Maria and Count M-v, blatant copying of earlier Russian publications -is clear. However, Louisa's origin remains a mystery. Whether it is a translation of a lost or unknown text or the creation of an unknown Russian author, by 1819, this text is the last in a long line of corporate Radcliffe works. In its attribution to Radcliffe, it carries the reputation of that line: both the probability of popularity and the association with lurid gothic thrills and scandal.
Despite the rich history of Ann Radcliffe's transmission, publication, and popularity in Russia, scholars often cite Nikolai Karamzin's short gothic story "Bornholm Island" [Ostrov Borngol'm] from 1794 as the apogee of the gothic genre in Russian literature. Karamzin's story is a familiar tale: a traveller comes upon a menacing castle while exploring a distant island. There he finds a mystery and ultimately discovers the daughter of the house imprisoned in a cave beneath it for transgressions too unspeakable to write. Karamzin's story is brimming with gothic cliché and he used the genre's conventions knowingly. During the 1790s, Karamzin embarked on an informal study of genre fiction, writing and publishing a number of works clearly situated within specific genres he had encountered on his 1789-90 trip through Western Europe, among them the sentimental tale, the historical adventure, and the gothic tale. Karamzin's foray into the gothic has since become the primary example of Russian gothic for Russian literature scholars. The prevalent narrative within Russian literary history is that gothic fiction represents a curiosity, a brief period when a handful of writers produced generically derivative texts that was quickly overturned by romanticism and the rise of the romantic fantastic. However, this narrative does not take popular reading and its influence into account. Furthermore, the story of Russian literature is usually told through a national paradigm so only works by Russians or in Russian are included; translations are largely treated as being of secondary importance. Karamzin's gothic story may seem a literary curiosity to Russian literature scholars, but its prominence in the canon today belies the history, popularity, variety, and volume of gothic texts that appeared on the Russian book market during the period 1790-1820, crucially developed by women's writing and via translation. Exploring the Russian corporate Radcliffe not only reveals the depth of Radcliffe's afterlife in Russia, but also challenges the conventional narrative of Russian literary history.
As this article has demonstrated, Radcliffe and pseudo-Radcliffe works had a vibrant afterlife. They also shaped Russian fiction. References to corporate Radcliffe texts are sprinkled across the major nineteenth-century Russian novels, among them Fathers and Children (1862) and War and Peace (1865). In the letter to Polonskii that opened this article, Dostoevskii states that, by 1829, he had read all of Radcliffe -including, as we know, a lot of pseudo-Radcliffe. His final novel Brothers Karamazov (1880) refers specifically to The Mysteries of Udolpho: It's just this consideration that has led the prosecutor to assume that the money is hidden in some hole at Mokroe. Why not in the dungeons of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn't this supposition really too fantastic and romantic? ([1880([ ] 1976 This is the lawyer Fetiukovich's speech in defence of Dmitrii Karamazov, who has been accused of patricide. In this courtroom scene, Fetiukovich brings up Udolpho in an attempt to cast aspersions on the prosecution's assumptions. Fetiukovich's dismissal of the dungeons of Udolpho as a romantic fantasy, one that a serious person would not entertain, echoes the reading of many critics before him. By 1880, however, the "gothic wave" when Radcliffe's books were bestsellers that virtually everyone read was seventy years in the past. The scene, however, suggests that the memory of Radcliffe persisted. For Dostoevskii's readers, a reference to the "dungeons of Udolpho" would evoke not just the English writer, but also the rich body of corporate Radcliffe works that came to represent a delightfully thrilling reading experience for generations afterwards.