In the following excerpt, Ellis suggests that in her Gothic novels Radcliffe elevates the character of romance by using the fanciful conventions of the Gothic tradition as a means of addressing the real problems encountered by a young lady or gentleman entering the world in the eighteenth century.

In the following excerpt, Spacks argues that Radcliffe bases the structure of her fiction on the "moral implications of [Edmund Burke's theory of the sublime."]

In the following excerpt, Todd provides a detailed overview of Radcliffe's novels and discusses the traits that distinguish her from both her eighteenth-century predecessors, such as Samuel Richardson, and her nineteenth-century successors and contemporaries, such as Mary Wollstonecraft.

In the following essay, Michasiw discusses the ways in which individual characters in Radcliffe's novels struggle with other characters and with the political and social institutions that define and determine the limits of power relations. In particular, he focuses on ways in which terror becomes not only an irrational response to illusory horrors in the story, but also a rational response to personal and institutional abuses of power.

In the following essay Chard introduces the general features of this early work of Radcliffe's. In addition to discussing the novel's genre, immediate critical reception, and place in literary history, Chard compares The Romance of the Forest to Radcliffe's later work in terms of her use of plot, characterization, and description.

In this essay, Murrah discusses how Radcliffe's reflective verbal pictures found in her published Journey serve as an introduction to her use of imaginative description of nature in her fiction.