The novel was her first major success, going through four editions in its first three years, and establishing her reputation as a leading figure in the Gothic romance genre.

Pierre, Madame, and their two domestic servants, Peter and Annette, are waylaid when the path they’re on becomes too dark to follow any longer.

The family, with the addition of Adeline, proceeds into the darkened interior of a forest, hoping to elude discovery and heeding the warnings of the stranger to not come back on the land they just left.

After returning to the family, Peter confides to Pierre that while he was in town he got in a fight and was unable to procure the necessary supplies for fixing the wheel, but he did purchase some food to tide them over.

Louis is supposed to find out the truth of where Pierre has been spending his days, but is unable to do so after losing sight of his father in the dense forest.

Being in the power of the Marquis, he knew he must either consent to the commission of a deed, from the enormity of which, depraved as he was, he shrunk in horror; or sacrifice fortune, freedom, probably life itself, to the refusal".

But, notwithstanding her fatigue, she could not sleep, and her mind, in spite of all her efforts, returned to the scenes that were passed, or presented gloomy and imperfect visions of the future".

[7] After her illness, Adeline is essentially adopted by Arnaud la Luc, Clara’s father, and spends the remainder of her time with the family.

Unaware of this, Adeline, Clara, and Monsieur la Luc travel to Paris to be with Theodore prior to his execution.

While Pierre is on trial, witnesses come forward, and it is discovered that the Marquis is not who he claims to be; he had previously murdered Adeline's father and stolen his inheritance.

In the last hours of his life, while tortured with the remembrance of his crime, he resolved to make all the atonement that remained for him, and having swallowed the potion, he immediately sent for a confessor to take a full confession of his guilt, and two notaries, and thus established Adeline beyond dispute in the rights of her birth, also bequeathing her a considerable legacy".

[8] In 1765 Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, widely regarded by modern literary historians to be the first occasion of Gothic fiction.

[9] A decade later, Clara Reeve wrote The Old English Baron, the first "Gothic" novel to be penned by a woman, and in 1783 Sophia Lee produced The Recess, a story set in the time of Queen Elizabeth I.

[10] These works prefigured much of the material and themes that Radcliffe would synthesise in her novels, most particularly ideas of the supernatural, terror, romance, and history.

This use of a ruined abbey, drawing on Burke's aesthetic theory of the sublime and the beautiful, establishes it a place of terror and of safety.

Burke argued that the sublime was a source of awe or fear brought about by strong emotions, such as terror or mental pain.

Related to the concepts of the sublime and the beautiful is the idea of the picturesque, introduced by William Gilpin, which was thought to exist between the two extremes.

Thus Radcliffe could use architecture to draw on the aesthetic theories of the time and set the tone of the story in the minds of the reader.

"[13] The Romance of the Forest was praised by the poet Coleridge, who wrote "the attention is uninterruptedly fixed, until the veil is designedly withdrawn" [1].

Although The Critical Review saw it as her finest work, it is not generally regarded in the same league as The Italian and The Mysteries of Udolpho; however, the Romance of the Forest was hugely popular in its day and remains in print after over two hundred years.

It is the subject of much critical discussion, particularly in its treatment of femininity and its role and influence in the Gothic tradition Radcliffe did so much to invent.