Narrative

7. Price: 4d.

Similarly, The Castle of Alvidaro (1809) is subtitled ‘A Romance’; romance was by far the most popular type of novel available in circulating libraries. Further, this is a gothic tale, capitalizing most noticeably on the title of Horace Walpole’s influential novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), but also on more recent popular gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Mathew Lewis’s The Monk (1796). Further, it is not only wrapped in distinguishing blue covers, but the frontispiece is an engraving rather than a woodcut, thus emulating the middle-class novels that sold for up to 30 shillings.