A best-seller in its day and a potent influence on Sade Poe and other purveyors of eighteenth
and nineteenth-century Gothic horror The Mysteries of Udolpho remains one of the most
important works in the history of European fiction. After Emily St. Aubuert is imprisoned by
her evil guardian Count Montoni in his gloomy medieval fortress in the Appenines terror
becomes the order of the day. With its dream-like plot and hallucinatory rendering of its
characters' psychological states The Mysteries of Udolpho is a fascinating challenge to
contemporary readers.
