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This episode is brought to you by The Earthy Smell in a Greenhouse.

Tonight, by listener request, will read the opening to 1794's The Mysteries of Udolpho by English author Anne Radcliffe.

Radcliffe was a pioneer of Gothic fiction and the most popular author of her day.

Later, the author, Dostoevsky, would write that he had been influenced by Radcliffe as a child.

I used to spend the long winter hours before bed listening, a gape with ecstasy and terror,

as my parents read aloud to me from the novels of Anne Radcliffe.

Then I would rave deliriously about them in my sleep.

The mysteries of Udolpho tells of Emily San Albert who suffers

among other misadventures the death of her mother and father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy

castle and the machinations of an Italian brigand. Let's get cozy.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths.

Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns, and, as the portals open to receive me,

her voice in sullen echoes through the courts tells of a nameless deed.

...