Anne Fuller


Anne Fuller was an Irish novelist in the Gothic genre. She was one of the earliest women writers of Gothic fiction.

Life and work

Anne Fuller was the daughter of William Fuller and Jane Harnett of West Kerries, Tralee, Co Kerry. Very little is known about her life except that she never married. She wrote three novels in the gothic style which were reprinted several times. She died around 1790 near Cork.
Since women readers of novels with supernatural characters and situations were considered "liable to many errors, both in conduct and conversation" and writers were even more confined, writers like Fuller often published anonymously. Fuller reportedly published her work Alan Fitz-Osbourne anonymously.
Her work has been reviewed as an insight into the early novelists and women writing in the 18th and 19th centuries. She is sometimes considered one of the key Irish authors in the development of gothic fiction along with Regina Maria Roche, Anne Burke, Mrs F. C. Patrick, Anna Millikin, Catharine Selden, Marianne Kenley, and Sydney Owenson Her writing itself in contrast, Baker in 1924 described as 'mediocre'.