The Literature of Terror: Volume 1 The Gothic Tradition

The first edition was regarded as the definitive survey of Gothic and related terror writing in English. No other text considers this genre on such a scale and covers the theoretical perspectives so comprehensively. In the latest edition, the broad range of theoretical perspectives has been enlarged to include modern critical theories. Volume One is a thoroughly updated edition of the original text, covering the period from 1765 up to the Edwardian age, exploring the richness and literary diversity of the gothic form: from the original eighteenth-century gothic of Ann Radcliffe to the melodramatic fiction of Wilkie Collins.

Preface to first edition Preface to second edition Acknowledgements 1. Introductory: dimensions of Gothic 2. The origins of Gothic fiction. Sentimentalism, Graveyard Poetry, The Sublime, Smollett, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee 3. The classic Gothic novels. Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis 4. Gothic and romanticism. Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, John Polidori, Mary Shelley 5. The dialectic of persecution. William Godwin, C.R. Maturin, James Hogg 6. Gothic, history and the middle classes. Scott, Bulwer Lytton, G.P.R. James, William Harrison Ainsworth, G.W.M Reynolds 7. Early American Gothic. Charles Brockden. Brown. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe 8. Gothic and the sensation novel. Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Sheridan LeFanu Appendix on Criticism Bibliography Index

David Punter is Professor of English at the University of Bristol, UK.