In 1883, baffled by an almost complete lack of information about one of her favorite romance writers, the poet Christina Rossetti abandoned her projected biography of Ann Radcliffe. "Someone else, I daresay, will gladly attempt the memoir," she wrote to her editor, J. H. Ingram. "But I despair and withdraw." Radcliffe's reticence, her habitual reluctance to engage the notice of the public, have continued to prove troublesome to her would-be biographers. There are no letters that shed light on her character, and she is seldom mentioned in the memoirs of her contemporaries. Her journals, which she kept on her tour of Holland and Germany and on her shorter trips throughout England, suggest that she was a sprightly and sensitive person, capable of undertaking vigorous walks across the hills of southern England and long boat rides on the Solent, a lover of nature, and a keen observer of animals, plants...