This collection of original research essays celebrates in a scholarly focused fashion the 250th anniversary of Ann Radcliffe’s birthday. “The Great Enchantress” of the Gothic romance, as her contemporaries re-christened her, was then and has been ever since the publication of her fiction, an author endowed with exceptional powers of enchantment over words, sounds and images. The contributors to this collection, all expert academics from Poland and France, specializing in 18th- and 19th-century literature, are determined to show that the enduring cultural presence of the Enchantress is well-deserved and worthy of acknowledgement. Central/East Europe is the site of numerous "Gothic" novels; it is very suitable that it be the source of so many new insights to one of the great Gothic writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.