Ann Radcliffe's works are traditionally regarded as anti-Catholic. She was seen as one of the Gothic authors that brought this prejudice more into the public eye of Anglican England. Her works, especially "The Italian", often have Catholic ideas presented in a negative light, including prejudices in the Inquisition, negative depictions of convents and nuns, monks as villains, and ruined abbeys. The confessional is often portrayed as a danger zone controlled by the power of the priest and the church. "The Italian" and "The Mysteries of Udolpho" are both set in Italy, a land historically predisposed towards Catholicism and against Protestantism. Radcliffe's works would have left her contemporary readers with an impression of Catholicism as something ultimately cruel and corrupt, and of the author as alienated from the denomination and its practitioners.