successful enough to allow her to be read by learned gentlemen as well as young men and women. Because the term 'gothic story’ was not commonly used in this period of time, Radcliffe's contemporaries used the term ‘romance’ to describe her genre. This term was classified as writing about miraculous tales through the use of poetic prose. This poetic element was referred to in multiple reviews of Radcliffe's The Italian and is considered to be the defining characteristic of the author's many Gothic works. This unique characteristic of her writing set the author apart from other writers of the time and earned her a reputation through the appraisal she received from many well-respected literary voices of the time. In general praise for the author, Sir Walter Scott called her 'the first poetess of romance fiction’; while Nathan Drake wrote that she was, 'the Shakespeare of Romance writers'. He believed that her readers valued her unrivaled ability to create – to realise visually – an enchanted, storied, and landscaped past. In a time where writing novels for commercial consumption was one of the only means through which a female author could earn a respectable living, The Italian was a great financial success for Radcliffe. Because of her reputation and earlier success, the author earned £800 from the original copyright of the novel, which was considered a very large sum for a female author and was unparalleled by many of Radcliffe's contemporaries. The Italian prompted a wide variety of both favourable and unfavorable reviews, making the overall reception of the novel very mixed. To some critics, it was the high point of Ann Radcliffe's short but productive career; to others, it represented a distinct decline in form from her earlier products. Most reviewers were united in believing that the monk Schedoni was the most successful character that Radcliffe had created in any of her novels. Characterised as a man governed by an amalgam of anger, hypocrisy and guilt, the monk was praised as standing apart from the traditional conventions of Gothic protagonists, and many readers approved of his strong personality. Not only was he considered one of the best characters, but one of the best villains; he had "great energy, with strong passions, and inordinate pride; sometimes softened by the feelings of humanity, but preserving the firmnesss of his mind in the most trying situations". However, many of these reviews found a