A Sicilian Romance is a gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe. It was her second published work, and was first published anonymously in 1790.
The plot concerns the fallen nobility of the house of Mazzini, on the northern shore of Sicily,
as related by a tourist who learns of their turbulent history from a
monk he meets at the ruins of their once-magnificent castle. The Mazzini
sisters, Emilia and Julia are 'beautiful' young ladies with many
talents. Julia quickly falls in love with the young and handsome Italian
count Hippolitus de Vereza, but to her dismay her father decides that
she should marry Duke de Luovo instead. After much thought Julia
attempts to elope with Hippolitus on the night before her wedding.
However, their escape had been anticipated, and the Marquis, Julia's
father, ambushes and seemingly kills Hippolitus whose body is carried
away by his servants. The Marquis tells Julia that she must marry the
duke and after much difficulty she escapes again alone. The Marquis and
the Duke spend much of the novel trying to catch Julia and force her to
marry the duke. Julia has to flee from her various hiding places as she
narrowly avoids capture and eventually ends up, by a secret tunnel, in
the abandoned and seemingly haunted southern apartments of the Mazzini
castle only to find that her mother, thought to be dead, had been
imprisoned there for years by the Marquis, who had grown to despise her.
The Marquis's new wife, Maria de Vellorno, commits murder-suicide after
the Marquis discovers and accuses her of infidelity, poisoning the
Marquis and stabbing herself. Before he dies the Marquis confesses to
Ferdinand, his son, that his mother has been imprisoned, and hands him
the keys. However, his mother and Julia had already been freed by
Hippolitus, who had recovered from his wounds. Ferdinand then finds them
at a lighthouse on the coast, waiting to leave for Italy, and they are
all joyfully reunited. The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition
notes that in this novel "Ann Radcliffe began to forge the unique
mixture of the psychology of terror and poetic description that would
make her the great exemplar of the Gothic novel, and the idol of the
Romantics". The novel explores the "cavernous landscapes and
labyrinthine passages of Sicily's castles and convents to reveal the
shameful secrets of its all-powerful aristocracy" .
