Gothic Literature

Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell & Andy Mousley This series provides accessible yet provocative introductions to a wide range of literatures. The volumes will initiate and deepen the reader‘s understanding of key literary movements, periods and genres, and consider debates that inform the past, present and future of literary study. Resources such as glossaries of key terms and details of archives and internet sites are also provided, making each volume a comprehensive critical guide. Gothic Literature Andrew Smith New edition of bestselling introductory text outlining the history and ways of reading Gothic literature This revised edition includes: - A new chapter on Contemporary Gothic which explores the Gothic of the early twenty first century and looks at new critical developments - An updated Bibliography of critical sources and a revised Chronology The book opens with a Chronology and an Introduction to the principal texts and key critical terms, followed by five chapters: The Gothic Heyday 1760-1820; Gothic 1820-1865; Gothic Proximities 1865-1900; Twentieth Century; and Contemporary Gothic. The discussion examines how the Gothic has developed in different national contexts and in different forms, including novels, novellas, poems, films, radio and television. Each chapter concludes with a close reading of a specific text - Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Dracula, The Silence of the Lambs and The Historian - to illustrate ways in which contextual discussion informs critical analysis. The book ends with a Conclusion outlining possible future developments within scholarship on the Gothic. Andrew Smith is Reader in Nineteenth Century English Literature at the University of Sheffield. His 15 published books include The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History (2010), Victorian Demons (2004), Gothic Radicalism (2004), and The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (edited with William Hughes: 2012).