# St. Alban's Abbey, A Metrical Tale

St. Alban's Abbey, A Metrical Tale is a poem by Ann Radcliffe, likely composed in 1808 and first published posthumously in 1826.

## Synopsis

The main narrative of the poem is set at the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, at the time of the 1455 First Battle of St. Alban's. The poem is prefaced with an apostrophe invoking the "Spirit of ancient days" as a Muse. Canto I, "The Abbey", describes the abbey's physical buildings in the eighteenth century as a mix of historical and modern features and invites the reader to imagine how it was used in the distant past, emphasizing the abbey's role as an intellectual and social hub of its community.
The narrative begins in Canto II, "The Night Before the First Battle", in which monks and knights nervously anticipate the next day. The poem's hero is a fictional Lancastrian, Baron Fitz-Harding. In addition to military scenes, the poem describes how the monks at the Abbey care for the wounded, and follows Fitz-Harding's wife Lady Florence on a dangerous journey in disguise to find her husband. Canto III is "The Day of the First Battle"; Canto IV, "The Hour After the Battle"; Cantos V and VI are "The Evening After the Battle", set outside the castle's walls and within the town and abbey, respectively.
Canto VII is "Scene in the Monastery", in which Fitz-Harding secretly takes shelter in the abbey buildings at night while Richard of York seeks him; he travels through the abbey's buildings disguised as a monk in Canto VIII, "Solemn Watch Within the Abbey", seeking his father among the wounded and dead, without success. In Canto IX, "Among the Dead", Fitz-Harding watches other mourners arrive with the dawn, including his wife Lady Florence looking for him in her own disguise. Canto X, also titled "Among the Dead", continues their reunion and Fitz-Harding's search for his father. The poem ends with Richard's capture of Henry VI.

## Style

St. Alban's Abbey is Radcliffe's longest narrative poem. Its stanzas, which vary in length, are grouped into ten cantos. The narrative pacing is influenced by Walter Scott's new and popular historical fiction; as in his writing, St. Alban's Abbey moves frequently between scenes of simultaneous events that make up multiple interconnected storylines. After the poem, Radcliffe included 61 pages of endnotes that contextualize its fiction through an antiquarian historical lens.

## Composition and publication

According to Radcliffe's biographer Rictor Norton, St. Alban's Abbey was most likely composed in 1808 to 1809. The poem's setting was inspired by Radcliffe's sightseeing trips with her husband in the south of England, especially her exploration of the cathedral for which the poem is named. For example, a helmet she saw there appears in the poem as the "golden damasked helmet" belonging to the hero's father.
Like everything Radcliffe wrote after her enormously successful final novel The Italian (1797), St. Alban's Abbey was not published until after her death. She died in 1823, and the poem formed part of a four-volume collection of posthumous works published in 1826. This collection is described on its title page as: Gaston de Blondeville, or The Court of Henry III. Keeping Festival in Ardenne, A Romance. St. Alban's Abbey, A Metrical Tale; With Some Poetical Pieces. By Anne Radcliffe, Author of "The Mysteries of Udolpho," "Romance of the Forest," &c. To Which is Prefixed a Memoir of the Author, With Extracts from Her Journals. The poem was split across volumes three and four of the set.

## Analysis
### Castle ruins

The historical preservation of castle ruins was a subject of debate in the late eighteenth century, especially expressed in concerns about modern "improvements" of ancient buildings.
At the time, historical fiction (especially that of Walter Scott) often presented history as a linear narrative of progress, with war as a natural part of that progress. Gothic literature sometimes undertook a similar whitewashing by viewing castle ruins solely as aesthetically beautiful objects, unrelated to a history of violence. In contrast, Radcliffe's poem depicts St. Alban's Abbey as a ruined monastery joined to a thriving cathedral.
Two poems published by Scott before Radcliffe wrote St. Alban's Abbey, namely The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808), feature similarly central castles.

### Gothic, Romantic, and antiquarian depictions of history

The aesthetics of the poem diverge from most of Radcliffe's previous writing. Radcliffe's early prose writing used historical settings, especially castles, as part of a suspenseful, sensationalist writing style known as the Gothic. Other novelists of the "Radcliffe school" in the 1790s frequently used similar settings, and added supernatural plot elements or violence to intensify the suspense and sensationalism. Meanwhile, poetic writing of the Romantic school depicted historical castles, especially ruined ones, to convey picturesque or a sublime encounter with the past. As the eighteenth century turned to the nineteenth, this Romantic aesthetic increasingly displaced the Gothic. An antiquarian approach to the past, influenced by Thomas Warton, also began to gain prominence.
In this context, St. Alban's Abbey reflects a change of course in Radcliffe's career. She uses poetry rather than prose fiction, and presents her archetypically Gothic setting in both a Romantic and an antiquarian light. Antiquarian elements include precise, technical descriptions of the castle architecture, and objects for which Radcliffe had seen real historical exemplars. The poem presents an unresolved tension between nostalgically longing for a lost heroic past, and ironically accepting that returning to the past is impossible.

## Reception

An anonymous review in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (which may have been written by Thomas Noon Talfourd, who was heavily involved in the publication) praised the entire collection of Radcliffe's posthumous works, primarily focusing on Gaston de Blondeville. This review compares St. Alban's Abbey favourably to the poetry of Walter Scott. The poem is often neglected in scholarship on Radcliffe.