Clara Reeve

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Clara Reeve (1729 - 1807), novelist, was the author of several novels, of which only one is remembered--The Champion of Virtue, later known as The Old English Baron (1777), written in imitation of, or rivalry with, the Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, with which it has often been printed. Her novel has noticeably influenced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Her innovative history of prose fiction, The Progress of Romance (1785), can be regarded generally as a precursor to modern histories of the novel and specifically as upholding the tradition of female literary history heralded by Elizabeth Rowe (1674 – 1737) and Susannah Dobson, d. 1795.

[edit] External links

• The Old English Baron: a Gothic Story, available freely at Project Gutenberg

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.