The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Northanger Abbey

by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. (Editor), Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe

A fast paced story of jealous passion, intrigue, murder and supernatural phenomena, unfolding in an atmosphere of thunderclaps, moonlight, and dark castle walls--mirroring the inner turmoils of the characters themselves. 2 cassettes.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Gothic

543 pages

First published June 1, 1963

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Northanger Abbey]
I think this is my favorite of Austen's works. It lacks any of the great romances that make her so popular amongst filmmakers and book clubs, but it shows off her greatest asset: her intelligence. Austen is, of course, famous for her wit and keen observations of social mores, and those are also put on display in Northanger Abbey. But this is one of the all-time great satires, demonstrating that she was capable of more than merely reproducing the world around her.

This is the book that makes me wonder what Austen would be like if she was alive today. Time and critical reception have pigeon-holed her; she's recognized as a great talent, but I think she's often dismissed as well. She's about more than just female empowerment and laughing at the way people acted in the 1800s. Austen's books are all about how people communicate, and it's still relevant today.

[Gwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for a copy of Northanger Abbey when I found this volume on my library's shelves. I found it to be a delightful way to read the least impressive of Jane Austen's novels. Austen's character Catherine Morland is obsessed with Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho. This edition contains the relevant excerpts from Udolpho to make sense of Catherine's fantasies. I had a lot of fun reading the "good parts" version of Udolpho, an overblown, overwrought, early Gothic work. I recommend this edition to any Austen fan.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combining powerhouses of Gothic literature Radcliffe and Walpole with the insightful parody of the Gothic tale that is Austen's Northanger Abbey, this helpful text could stand proudly alongside any English Literature coursebook, while being dramatically more engaging. I had been wanting to read each of these books for quite some time; seeing the three of them in one volume at the library seduced me to depart from my themed reviews and I am delighted to have seized the opportunity. Here's a brief overview of the separate novels:
Only the linear nature of time prevents The Castle of Otranto being the bizarre lovechild of Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors and every haunted castle story every written. This weirdly comic tale of an ambitious family whose oversized birds finally come home to roost can't quite decide if it wants readers to laugh or cry, so it mooshes together mistaken identities with murders and aims to achieve both at once. I'm hoping Walpole was inventing the Gothic genre when he wrote this.
My one disappointment in this collection relates to The Mysteries of Udolpho: space constraints necessitated the version included here be abridged quite heavily. If you pay attention to the tiny printing on the cover and the specific chapters that make up each individual volume, you will notice when something has been omitted. If, like me, you are bellyflopping into the body of the text, you are presented with a choppy, confusing story that changes countries and secondary characters in the time it took you to flip a page. The full story runs some 300 000 words. About half the length of War and Peace or Atlas Shrugged, roughly as long as Middlemarch, and about six times the length of Fahrenheit 451. So the pruning is justified. If disconcerting. We meet the St. Aubert family in their bucolic cabin in the French countryside, tagging along with Monsieur St. Aubert and daughter Emily as the duo travel to the seaside in the hopes of restoring St. Aubert senior's flagging health. The wheel of fortune turns and Emily is deposited unceremoniously with the unscrupulous, mendacious Montoni family deep in the Apennines, in the secluded, crumbling Udolpho castle, where who knows what creeping horrors await her? Certainly not us, that part got edited out. The editors smoosh on an ending of sorts, but if you've never read The Mysteries of Udolpho before, this chopped up offering may leave you unsatisfied.
Northanger Abbey is a delight. Our staunchly average heroine, Catherine Morland, adores Gothic novels (she's reading The Mysteries of Udolpho) and hopes with all her heart to have a Gothic adventure of her own one day. When she joins her friends Eleanor and Henry Tilney at their home, her determination to see an eerie portent in every cabinet and a mystery down every well-lit hallway brings her sharply up against good sense and rationality as Austen subverts the genre. It's an excellent conclusion to this collection of Gothic works, and yet another example of Austen's genius.

[Blake Griggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Northanger Abbey is a strong 4, but Castle of Otranto is a 3 and Mysteries of Udolpho a 3, too. Mysteries of Udolpho has only 4 volumes but I can’t help but feel my copy is missing a few chapters between the second and third volumes because it leaps from the traveling party arriving at the monastery in the Pyrenees to Venice with an entirely new set of circumstances and cast of characters except Emily. Was trending to 4 before that very disorienting leap which may just be how the book was published. I have no idea but it took me a long time to get my bearings. When I have read the plot described it includes events not covered in my copy except only in the brief final volume when everything is explained

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the collection, but the editing of Udolpho was weird. I 100% agree with abridging it, but leaving the first 5 chapters of volume I in and then cutting out big chunks of the narrative that make it make sense (without summarizing the removed sections) was not a great move.

[Carla Hostetter · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest if The Castle of Otronto weren't considered the first Gothic romance every pubished, I'd have given it a one, but it does hold a place in history in starting a genre still out there with covers of distressed females and castles brooding in the background. Walpole claimed he wanted to redeem the Middle Ages from its reputation for squalor and brutality and show its more chivalrous face. I suppose he does this, but the book reads like a very bad play by Shakespeare without the fine, poetic language (just long speeches using thee and thou) and the feisty heroines like Portia, Lady Macbeth or Kate, the Shrew. All of his women swoon at crucial moments and fall in love with voices beneath their windows and portraits of handsome men on the walls.
There are apparations and other supernatural happenings, caves and subterranean chambers,meddlling priests, and comic servants, and of course, a peasant who turns out to be a prince returned to overthrow the evil Manfred. Spoiler alert: when one of the swooning maidens dies, the good price marries the other so they can spned it lives together mourning her, worst ending ever. But, don't worry about it. Only an English major would want to read this.

[Sistermagpie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this book hanging around since college and finally got around to reading all of it. The main thing I hadn't read here was Mysteries of Udolpho. This was an abridged version but I can't say I feel like I missed out in not reading the whole thing. It seems that sucker was looooong and the good parts as excerpted here don't seem like enough to sustain all that.

It's very much what you'd expect--spooky castle, a wicked guardian type, a heroine trying to keep from being married off to a bad man, a secret love, secret passages and mysterious things behind black curtains that make the heroine faint and leave the audience to fill in with their imaginations. Oh, and of course secret family connections that explain everything in the end. Of all the books I've read that are considered sort of the basis for Gothic lit--Udolpho, Otranto and The Monk I think this was my least favorite mostly for the purple prose. The other two were more to the point and actually more kooky. I believe one of the interesting points about Gothic as written by men and women is women authors tended toward mundane explanations while the guys went full out supernatural.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept thinking the entire time that Edward Gorey really should've done an illustrated edition of this book. Two pages in and someone is killed by an enormous helmet. Instead of a ghost, there's a giant knight in the creepy castle, moonlit crypts, damsels in distress, a villain who ought to have a handlebar mustache to twirl, stories of shipwreck, friends who fall for the same man . . . It's silly fun. The dialogue is laughably bad, the plot twists contrived and the characters seemed to be puppets dangled by the author. But it was so much fun that it's worth a read, and fairly short. The edition I found also had an abridged Mysteries of Udolpho and Northanger Abbey, both of which I've already read and may one day review separately. Love Northanger Abbey and Henry Tilney is my favorite Jane Austen leading man. Udolpho has some of the same flaws as Otronto, but Ann Radcliffe takes her story seriously, and I'm not convinced that Walpole did. Jane, of course, satirized the genre in her book. I think she would've done a brilliant Twilight send-up.

[Allyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting read as I loved the idea of the book, loved the heft and feel of it, but found the introduction dry and useless. I thought the Walpole story too middle age in feeling and was surprised given the date of it's writing. Maybe the author's intention escaped me.
I much preferred Ann Radcliffe's story but was disappointed and felt slighted by it's edited form. Key volumes were omitted and while I would have loved to have read it in it's entirety, I admit I will not reread simply to obtain the full story. The edited form ruined my full experience given I already read the ending.
I most enjoyed Austen's story in the context of already knowing Radcliffe's story. I would not have enjoyed the satire as much if Udolpho was unknown to me. But it struck me as the most flimsy of Austen's novels.
A very interesting commplilation but a poor forward or introduction in my estimation.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit that the version I read of The Mysteries of Udolpho was very abridged, so I some parts were very confusing as I felt I was missing important information. Yet the sections I did read were very verbose; I'm not certain I would want to read the entire thing. Still, I'm glad I did; I feel I have a better understanding of Austen for reading one of the most popular authors of her time. And of course the gothic horror part of the story was fun ... the black veil, the haunted castle, ghosts, mysterious locked chests, etc. Worth the read.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

[I read only The Castle of Otronto, but this is the only copy of the book that I could find on Goodreads.]

I read this book for school in one week. It was too much reading reading all at once. The words were difficult and it took me a long time to get the reading done.

That said, I've got to say that the story was pretty fun (not believable :D) and dramatic. It was set in the Middle Ages, which I don't really like, but it was exciting - I'll give it that.

So if you want a challenge, read the book! But don't read it in one week. :P

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just read the Castle of Otranto because I want to see how the Gothic novel got started. I've read Northanger Abbey before and the Mysteries of Udolopho here is only abridged. Walpole's Otranto is an entertaining story, though simple. It certainly had elements I would expect of such a novel--haunted castle, identities revealed, threatening seducers. But I'd hoped for more atmospheric setting. And the dialogue was overly wrought emotions--like the sentimentalist literature of the period, I guess.

[Jennifer Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gothic mania! This has all the elements of awesome supernatural fun, hauntings, and stuff you just won't believe unless you read it. With the beautiful princess, her hideous tormentor, the weakling she's betrothed to, and the heroines who must overcome. Some argue that Walpole invented the genre. I don't care who invented it, this novel is one heckuva good time. I laughed, I cried, it made me want to write a screenplay.

[Tell Tale Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Emily Schmidt

[Robin Rader]

ILL