The Orphan of the Rhine

The Orphan of the Rhine was a gothic novel by Mrs. Eleanor Sleath, listed as one of the seven "horrid novels" by Jane Austen in her novel Northanger Abbey Subtitled "A Romance" it was published in four volumes the sensationalist Minerva Press in 1798. This is a "two-story" tale, half about the mother and half about the daughter; it is a classic gothic in the Radcliffe tradition. There are manuscripts, secret marriages, armed men on horseback, religious figures, scary mansions with rusty bolts and locks and trunks and bones! The novel was part of a brief but popular vogue of German tales, a fashion criticized in the Critical Review of June 1807 "So great is the rage for German tales, and German novels, that a cargo is no sooner imported than the booksellers' shops are filled with a multitude of translators, who seize with avidity and without discrimination, whatever they can lay their hands upon...[these novels are] trash...[and] worthless objects." 


Contemporary Reviews

The Critical review, 1799 - The creative genius and the descriptive powers of Mrs. Radcliffe have given considerable popularity to the modern romance; and, even as critics, we have perused the productions of that authoress with no small degree of interest and gratification. If, however, we have sinned in suffering ourselves to be seduced by the blandishments of elegant fiction, we endure a penance adequately severe in the review of such vapid and servile imitations as the Orphan of the Rhine, and other recent romances.