GOTHIC FICTION

Introduction

By Peter Otto

2 - The Microfilm Collection

The remarkably extensive archive produced by these heterogeneous, yet oddly complementary, influences is organised in Gothic Fiction, the present microfilm collection of texts from the Sadleir-Black archive, into four main sections:

Parts One and Two: Matthew Lewis and Gothic Horror
This first section focuses on the master of Gothic Horror, Matthew Lewis, and the host of minor and major writers who, in the years after the publication of Lewis's The Monk, attempted to emulate, plagiarise or surpass the horrors described in that volume. These are novels of graphic violence, sexual transgression, and supernatural terrors. Also included are authors who, although perhaps only indirectly influenced by Lewis, attempt to reproduce the frenzied violence and pace of the German Schauerroman (thriller or shocker). In addition to three early editions of The Monk (mapping his belated attempts to sanitize his novel) and six other Gothic works by Lewis, highlights of the collection include works by Charlotte Dacre, Joseph Fox, William Green, Carl Grosse, Ann Julia Hatton, William Ireland, Harriet Jones, Francis Lathom, Thomas Pike Lathy, Mary Pilkington, Charles Maturin, John Moore, John Palmer, Eliza Parsons, Regina Maria Roche, Richard Sicklemore and George Walker, amongst others.

Parts Three and Four: Gothic Terror - Anne Radcliffe and her Imitators
Described as a "mighty enchantress"14 and "the Shakespeare of Romance Writers",15 Ann Ward Radcliffe is the most important of the Gothic novelists, routinely credited by her contemporaries with having inaugurated a new "school" of fiction.16 Her novels of suspense, sublime scenery, exquisite terror (conjured by protagonists and readers from hints, signs and possibilities) and the explained supernatural, with their remarkable heroines of sensibility and powerful villains, were enormously popular. They inspired a host of followers, imitators, and plagiarists attempting to take advantage of the almost insatiable demand for her work. This section contains all five of the novels Radcliffe published in her lifetime (all are first editions) and the most important of the writers who (in the novels included here) followed closely in her tracks. There are works by James Boaden, Elizabeth Bonhote, Eliza Bromley, Mary Charlton, Hannah Cowley, T. J. Horsley Curties, Catherine Cuthbertson, Sarah Green, J. M. H. Hales, Ann Julia Hatton, Elizabeth Helme, Anthony Holstein, Mrs Isaacs, Sarah Landsdell, Mary Meeke, Mary Pickard, Mary Ann Radcliffe, Mary Robinson, Regina Maria Roche, Rosalia St. Clair, Catharine Selden, Eleanor Sleath, Catherine Smith, Charlotte Smith, Louisa Stanhope and Sarah Wilkinson, along with novels by anonymous writers.

Parts Five and Six: Domestic and Sentimental Gothic
Many of the novelists included in this third section are also influenced by Radcliffe and, like that "mighty enchantress", draw heavily on the plots and tropes of the novel of sensibility. In these works, the realism of the eighteenth-century novel of seduction is displaced by an interest in the subjective world of uncertainty, agony, and nightmare into which the protagonist is plunged. In this often female-centred fiction, the gothic heroine of sensibility is discovered searching for her missing parents, acting as detective, struggling to emancipate herself from a violent family, exploring the "terrain" that divides sense from sensibility, trying to make sense of the collision between the private and the public world, and so on. In Lewis's The Monk, the paternal family (and companionate marriage) is offered as antidote to the patriarchal world exemplified by monastic institutions. In domestic and sentimental gothic, the paternal family (and the disjunction between private and public worlds it confirms) is explored as a possible source of horror. In this context, the centre of the third section is Mary Shelley's famous Frankenstein; or, The modern Prometheus, represented by the first edition of 1818. Also included are novels by a stunning variety of authors: Mrs Bennett, Charles Brown, Elizabeth Brown, Mrs Burke, Catherine Cuthbertson, Charlotte Dacre, Selina Davenport, Eliza Fenwick, Isabella Hedgeland, Elizabeth Helme, Lady Caroline Lamb, Francis Lathom, Anna Mackensie, Mary Meeke, George Moore, Sydney Morgan, Agnes Musgrave, Eliza Parsons and Mary Pilkington, John Russell, Louisa Stanhope, Richard Warner, and Charles Brockden Brown, amongst many others. "Domestic and Sentimental Gothic" also includes earlier instances of the form by Mrs Gunning, Mrs Harley and Charlotte Smith.

Parts Seven and Eight: Gothic History, Satire and Chapbooks
Drawing on the late eighteenth-century revival of interest in Gothic (ie medieval) architecture and customs, Gothic histories commonly renarrate events in the lives of figures such as Lady Jane Grey, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth II and Mary Queen of Scots. Although the authors of such works sometimes have a good eye for historical detail, their protagonists are painted as victims, villains, heroes or heroines in a Gothic drama. The collection includes early Gothic histories by Thomas Leland, Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee and James White, as well as later examples by many of the main practitioners of the form: C. A. Bolen, T. J. Horsley Curties, Thomas De Quincey, William Godwin, Sarah Green, Mrs Harley, Elizabeth Helme, William Ireland, George Lambe, Francis Lathom, Charles Maturin, Edward Moore, Agnes Musgrave, Anna Maria Porter, Jane Porter, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Henry Siddons, Louisa Stanhope, Joseph Strutt, Mrs Sykes and Thomas Whalley.

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (written in 1798; revised and completed by 1803; first published in 1818) is the most well-known of the satires, parodies and burlesques of the genre that were common, particularly in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Amongst the fourteen examples included in this collection are Eaton Stannard Barrett's remarkable The heroine, or Adventures of a fair romance reader (London: Henry Colburn, 1813), Mary Charlton's Rosella, or, Modern occurrences. A novel (London: Minerva, 1799), Sophia Griffith's She would be a heroine (London: Baldwin, et al, 1816), Ircastrensis's Love and horror; an imitation of the present, and a model for all future romances (London: J. J. Stockdale, 1815), Thomas Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (London: T. Hookham, jun., et al, 1818) and the first edition of Northanger Abbey.

In contrast to the many hundreds of pages contained by "typical" Gothic novels, chapbooks are usually composed of no more than 24 or 36 pages. Luridly illustrated, they often squeeze into their much narrower compass the events narrated by their larger cousins. Their pages are consequently packed with horrors, swoons and remarkable events, advertised with titles such as: The bloody hand, or, The fatal cup. A tale of horror! In the course of which is described the terrible dungeons and cells in the prisons of Buonaparte (London: Stevens and Co. Circulating Library, [n.d.]); The secret oath, or Blood-stained dagger, a romance (London: Tegg and Castleman [1802]; The cavern of horrors; or, Miseries of Miranda. A Neapolitan tale (London, W. S. Betham, [1802]; Fatal jealousy; or, Blood will have blood! Containing The history of Count Almagro ad Duke Alphonso (London: T. and R. Hughes, 1807), and so on. Designed to be popular and ephemeral, few Gothic chapbooks have survived. Indeed, many of the more than 120 chapbooks in this microfilm collection have been reproduced from the only copies now extant. Although an important part of Gothic fictions and the precursor of the Victorian penny dreadful and shilling shocker, Gothic chapbooks have rarely been the object of academic study.

The four sections of Gothic Fiction are designed to be inclusive rather than exclusive. While focussing on prose works written in English, they include the occasional Gothic drama and a handful of the many English and French translations of German and French Gothic fictions. Although the collection is centred on works published in England, Scotland and Ireland, it includes a handful of texts published in the United States.

Before describing in more detail the authors and some of the Gothic "movements" represented in this collection, however, it may be useful to describe its main contours in more detail. It is an indication of the variety of texts included that the attempt to describe its contents and the various research possibilities it opens, quickly becomes an account of the genre. In what follows, all Gothic texts cited are included, often in first editions, in Gothic Fiction.

3 - Gothic Origins

4 - Gothic Revolutions

5 - The Northanger Novels

6 - Radcliffe and her Imitators

7 - Lewis and her Followers

8 - Terror and Horror Gothic

9 - Gothic Echoes / Gothic Labyrinths

<Back to Contents