Clermont (novel) "Midnight Bell", "Orphan of the Rhine", and "Horrid Mysteries". Those will last us some time. Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? —"Northanger Abbey", ch. 6 "Clermont", as well as the other "horrid novels", were once thought to be the creations of Jane Austen's imagination, however research in the first half of the 20th century by Michael Sadleir and Montague Summers confirmed that they did actually exist and stimulated renewed interest in the Gothic. Clermont (novel) Clermont is a Gothic novel by Regina Maria Roche. It was first published in 1798 by
Northanger Abbey as the preface of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", thus likening the naive mistakes of Austen's Catherine Morland to those of his own character Briony Tallis, who is in a similar position: both characters have very over-active imaginations, which lead to misconceptions that cause distress in the lives of people around them. Both treat their own lives like those of heroines in fantastical works of fiction, with Miss Morland likening herself to a character in a Gothic novel and young Briony Tallis writing her own melodramatic stories and plays with central characters such as "spontaneous Arabella" based on herself. Richard Adams quotes