Clara Reeve

The Old English Baron Clara Reeve

Clara Reeve (1729-1807), novelist, was the author of several novels, of which only one is remembered -- 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.