Andrew Smith

Outlining the history and ways of reading Gothic literature, this revised edition includes a chapter on Contemporary Gothic which explores the Gothic of the early twentieth century and looks at new critical developments. It features an updated Bibliography of critical sources and a revised Chronology

Gothic Literature

Lily

In my opinion, this was a better introductory-analytical companion to Gothic literature compared to Fred Botting's Gothic. It is a well-written, well-researched, quite comprehensive chronological dive into many works of gothic literature from its early manifestations in romantic poetry and the writings of Radcliffe and Lewis to the fin de siècle gothic of Shelley and Stevenson. The concluding chapter, while intriguing in intention (it deals with modern and postmodern incarnations of gothic) is too short; Perhaps the choice to grapple with such a dense and broad subject in just one chapter is too ambitious. However, it still might serve as a brief and useful introduction to be followed by the myriad of texts suggested at the end of the book as further reading.

Gothic Literature

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