7/9/1764 Ann Radcliffe enters the world

July 9, 1764.  We are going far back into the past of our field today.  Ann Radcliffe was one of the inventers of Gothic literature, and a big influence on Edgar Allan Poe, de Sade, and others.  Her books involved apparent supernatural elements which were always given rational explanations at the end. 

Although we know her birth and death dates, and who she was married to, and so on, she left so little record beyond that  - and beyond her works, of course - that potential biographers have been mostly frustrated.