The queen of suspense: how Ann Radcliffe inspired Dickens and Austen – then got written out of the canon

She was all but forgotten. Now the 18th-century author's republished novels reveal why she made such an extraordinary contribution to literature

She was a proto-feminist author whose phenomenally popular novels commanded unprecedented fees and influenced the work of Jane Austen, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry James, the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens.

Yet for centuries, Ann Radcliffe has been neglected by publishers, her name missing from textbooks and anthologies, and her extraordinary contribution to literature overlooked.