Ann Radcliffe (née Ward) was born in London on the 9^th July 1764, the only child of William and Ann (Oates) Ward, into a family whose “connections”, according to the Annual Biography and Obituary (1824), “were of the most respectable description” (Anon 89). William Ward was a haberdasher originally from Leicestershire and Ann’s mother’s family were from Derbyshire. Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd’s “Memoir”, the first biography of Radcliffe, which was prefixed to Radcliffe’s posthumous works published in 1826, also suggests that her parents were “persons of great respectability, who, though engaged in trade, were allied to families of independent fortune and hig

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First published 25 August 2007

Citation: Webber, Caroline. "Ann Radcliffe". The Literary Encyclopedia. 25 August 2007.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3691, accessed 20 November 2009.]