Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition Acknowledgements 1. Gothic and decadence: Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen 2. Later American Gothic: Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft 3. The ambivalence of memory: Henry James and Walter de la Mare 4. Formalism and meaning in the ghost story: Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, David Lindsay 5. Gothic in the horror film 1930-1980 6. Modern perspectives of the barbaric: Mervyn Peake, 'Isak Dinesen', John Hawkes, Joyce Carol Oates, James Purdy, William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Robert Coover, Angela Carter 7. Contemporary Gothic transformations 8. Mutations of terror: theory and GothicBibliography Index