Showing posts with label Gothic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gothic. Show all posts
Friday, 24 June 2016
‘On This Day in 1816’: The Bicentenary of Frankenstein’s Composition
‘On This Day in 1816’: The Bicentenary of Frankenstein’s Composition
A public reading of Romantic poetry and prose to be held at the Keats-Shelley House, Rome, on Saturday 23rd July 2016 (start time 18:30).
The same event will also be held at King’s Manor, University of York on Thursday 14th July 2016 (start time 19:00).
In May 1816, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin and Claire Clairmont moved to Geneva where they would live near Lord Byron and his physician-companion, Dr John William Polidori. Over the next few weeks, this group of young intellectuals spent almost all their time together, sailing on Lake Geneva by day and reading and conversing in the evenings. One night in late May or early June, a ghost-story writing competition began. Inspired by this, the 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley) conceived what is now one of the most iconic tales in English literature. Frankenstein was published anonymously nineteen months later.
On the wet afternoon of 24 July 1816, Mary notes in her journal, ‘write my story’: this is her first reference to the composition of Frankenstein. Percy Shelley was also writing his poem ‘Mont Blanc’ on this day. Both authors were inspired by their visits to Chamonix and the Mer De Glace, subjects of awe for many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers. These shared experiences and subsequent discussions resulted in descriptions of the landscape in individual journal entries and letters that are strikingly similar. For example, the immensity of the mountains produce a similar image of alienation: ‘The summits of the highest were hid in Clouds but they sometimes peeped out into the blue sky higher one would think than the safety of God would permit’ (Mary); ‘They pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this earth’ (Percy). Even scenes that lack grandeur still induce feelings of admiration: ‘there is som[e]thing so divine in all this scenery that you love & admire it even where its features are less magnificent than usual’ (Mary); ‘there is a grandeur in the very shapes and colours which could not fail to impress, even on a smaller scale’ (Percy). These shared impressions would become the basis for ‘Mont Blanc’ and also the pivotal scene in Frankenstein in which Victor encounters his creation for the first time since his ‘birth’.
This event at the Keats-Shelley House in 2016 celebrates the bicentenary of the composition of the Romantic period’s most famous novel, and this fruitful period of creativity for both Shelleys in 1816. The event will take place almost exactly 200 years later to the day that Mary Shelley began writing. The evening will include a reading of the preface and the introduction to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the most famous scene in the novel when the creature awakens (‘It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils’), and excerpts from Percy Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’. Two scholars (Anna Mercer and David Higgins) will give short talks on the Shelleys’ collaborative literary relationship, and 1816 as ‘the Year Without a Summer’.
The event will also take place on 14 July 2016 at the King’s Manor, University of York, in collaboration with the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies (CECS) at York, and the University of Leeds. The York event will provide an alternative venue for those who want to attend the event but who cannot travel to Rome. Both events are public ticketed events. We hope to produce an invigorating atmosphere that will allow attendees to consider the history of Frankenstein during this exciting bicentenary month. The events are supported by the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS), the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (BSECS), CECS at York, the FR Leavis Fund at York, and the Keats-Shelley House.
The talk by Anna Mercer will focus on her research as a PhD candidate at the University of York. Her thesis considers the Shelleys’ collaborative literary relationship and seeks to provide an unprejudiced study of both authors and their influence on each other. Frankenstein is now understood as a crucial example of collaborative writing from the Romantic period, as Percy Shelley edited Mary’s manuscript draft. Percy’s alterations and corrections were not an imposing corruption of his wife’s writing; instead, the way the Shelleys worked together in 1816 can be understood and analysed as an example of reciprocal creativity. As Neil Fraistat observed at the launch of the Shelley-Godwin archive in 2013, Frankenstein was part of ‘a two-way collaboration […] this wasn’t just about him supervising her’. The Frankenstein scholar Charles E. Robinson has identified the possibility of the Shelleys ‘at work on the [Frankenstein] Notebooks at the same time, possibly sitting side by side and using the same pen and ink to draft the novel and at the same time to enter corrections’. This event will present to the public a reading of the work of both authors, including the preface and the introduction to the novel: the former written by Percy and published in 1818, and the latter written retrospectively in 1831 by Mary. These extracts provide the notorious details of the Shelleys’ experiences in Geneva in 1816 that stirred Mary Shelley to give life to her ‘hideous progeny’. The event therefore looks to celebrate such a moment of literary inspiration and invites readers to learn more about the history of the novel’s author(s).
David Higgins’s talk will draw on his research on Romantic writing and environmental catastrophe. Cultural historians have recently explored how the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora in 1815 caused severe disruption to the global climate and, in particular, the ‘Year Without A Summer’ of 1816 (e.g. Wood 2014). However, what has not been properly investigated is the extent to which Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Shelley were responding as a creative community to the unusual environmental conditions. The grim summer of 1816 heightened their apprehension of the sublimity of the Alpine landscape and led them to contemplate the frightening power of the natural world. This talk will bring together ‘Mont Blanc’, Frankenstein, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, and ‘Darkness’ to examine the shared ways in which they address the problem of dwelling with environmental catastrophe.
Tickets
The Rome event is on the Keats-Shelley House website here:
To buy tickets (€10 each) for the event in Rome on 23rd July 2016, please email: info@ksh.roma.it
The York event is on the CECS website here:
It is free to attend at York on 14th July 2016 but you must register on eventbrite.
Refreshments will be served at both events.
For enquiries please contact Anna Mercer (anna.mercer@york.ac.uk)
Event Team:
- Anna Mercer, University of York (speaker and main organiser)
- David Higgins, University of Leeds (speaker and co-organiser)
- Lucy Hodgetts and Duncan Robertson, University of York (readers and co-organisers)
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Gothic Horror and Georgian Dublin
Caroline Barry's novel, The Dolocher, is a wonderful read set in the streets of Dublin. A darker than dark Gothic thriller, I don't want to give anything away but don't miss this book and don't miss Caroline guest post today!
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Gothic Horror and Georgian Dublin
Georgian Dublin was a glittering, lively city full of rakes and rascals, eccentrics, scholars, actors, vagabonds and rogues. The streets bristled with hawkers selling a variety of wares.
Food came in wooden barrels, there was ‘pease pudding’, ‘oysters’ and ‘Bulrudderie cakes’ and a fresh supply of ‘whey’ should that take your fancy. You could buy clogs from the travelling cobblers; crockery was carried in a large wooden crate by a two man team and if you wanted a change of coat or jacket there was the second-hand-clothes merchants who carried their stock on a pole on their back.
The wealthy or middling classes had an array of new shops to venture into, including Jones Periwig shop, you can still see the painted sign advertising it’s wigs on Dawson Street. Jones’ shop used to keep a supply of bears out in the yard and would regularly kill a bear for it’s grease since it was considered the best substance for keeping curls firm and lustrous.
For entertainment there were the many theatres, Smock Alley and the Crow Street Theatre where Spranger Barry and the eighteenth century superstar actor Garrick performed, and of course Neale’s music hall on Fishamble Street where famously Handle’s Messiah was first produced.
There’s a rumour that an Irishman Richard Daly invented the word ‘quiz’. He ran Smock Alley theatre and supposedly for a bet said that he would invent a word that would be used throughout the capital within forty-eight hours. He then got a team of actors to paint the word ‘quiz’ on walls around the city and within two days the word was the talk of the town. It has been argued that ‘quiz’ had already been in use at the time to denote an eccentric, if that is the case and staying with this early meaning of the word there were many ‘quizzical’ inhabitants in Dublin during the seventeen hundreds.
The most striking stories are jaw dropping. Sometimes they are slight stories, humorously told but struck through with a shivering streak of savagery. Take for example nick-names. There was a man who shot his friend Kelly, and another who killed his coachman. The first got the nickname of ‘Killkelly,’ the second became known as ‘Killcoachy.’ And the black humour continues. There were three brothers, seemingly of noble birth, all of them famous for deficiencies in their character. The first brother was a notorious fighter, he would cause a row wherever he went, the second was frequently flung into prison, the third had been disabled from his ‘buckish’ behaviour and they became universally known as ‘Hellgate,’ ‘Newgate,’ and ‘Cripplegate.’
Aristocratic men were frequently flung out of the second story window of Daly’s gaming club on College Green, in fact the gambling fever took hold of not only the ascendancy but the lower orders.
I was surprised to learn there were lotteries in Dublin in the seventeen hundreds. There’s a very interesting story that I can’t quiet shake, it may be apocryphal, but a bit of me wonders if it is true. The lottery shops were painted bright gaudy colours; the interiors were fitted with mirrors reflecting dazzling glass chandeliers festooned with ribbons. The décor was especially designed to entice you inside. A scheme was devised where you could ‘insure’ a number for a shilling and each day in the lottery-hall on Capel Street the wheel was turned and a number called. The story goes that a young blind girl who begged on Sackville Street and had attracted attention because she was so polite and clean and ‘mannerly.’ She had a little basket full of articles covered with a net and made more money than an ordinary beggar. One night she dreamed of a number, certain it was a premonition she became convinced that she would make her fortune by it. She ‘insured’ her number over and over until everything she had was gone and she could no longer ‘play.’ On the day that she could no longer take part in the lottery her number came up. The story goes that she ‘groped her way to the Royal Canal, and threw herself into it.’
I gathered all these stories and many more when I was researching for my gothic novel The Dolocher. The dazzling Georgian fashions in clothes, architecture and manners have a curiously modern tinge to them. The current twitter culture seems beautifully reflected in the noisy debating environs of the eighteenth century coffee shop. Modern open and relaxed attitudes to sexual expression can be found in the jelly and molly houses of the eighteenth century underworld. But scratch the surface of any culture and you find the gothic.
Eighteenth century crime in Dublin was exactly like that of London and as a result the prisons were notoriously overcrowded. We had a debtor’s prison in Dublin called The Black Dog, and it was in the Black Dog prison that the Dolocher ghost story begins.
The prison was an infamous ‘sink of vice,’ the keeper a vicious psychopath who on one occasion broke the leg of an inmate and left him down in the cellar. The cellar frequently flooded; the cot beds were known to float on the swelling water of the Liffey. The poor man with the broken leg took weeks to die and it took a committee on his behalf quite some time to bring a case against the keeper and have him and a number of his turn-key cohorts sacked from their jobs.
It was in this prison that a man called Olocher was incarcerated. He had been found guilty of the rape and murder of a young girl and was due to be executed. The night before he was due to be hanged he killed himself. A week later one of his guards was found at the foot of some steps outside of the prison, he had taken a stroke and was paralysed down one side of his body. When the guard regained his speech he told everyone that he had been attacked by a demon. It had come at him from the shadows, from Olocher’s cell. It was Olocher’s demon, half-beast-half-man, and a legend was born.
The Dolocher terrorised Dublin for a whole winter and fascinated by the tale I was inspired to write a gothic novel reimagining those events that took place many years ago.
Written content of this post copyright © Caroline Barry, 2016.
Tuesday, 26 April 2016
Reimagining the Gothic
Reimagining the Gothic: Event Announcement
Calling all Goths! “Reimagining the Gothic 2016: Monsters and Monstrosities,” a two day Symposium and Showcase event, will be taking place at the University of Sheffield on May 6th & 7th.
“Reimagining the Gothic” is an ongoing project, conceived and implemented by postgraduate students at the University of Sheffield, which seeks to explore how the Gothic can be re-read, re-analyzed, and re-imagined. We encourage both public interest and new academic avenues from students and scholars who wish to pursue and explore interdisciplinary and creative Gothic projects. In particular, 'monsters' and the ways in which monstrosity affects Gothic discourses are important potential spaces for academic and creative exploration. With “Reimagining the Gothic: Monsters and Monstrosities” we hope to reconsider notions of monstrousness, to explore how the idea of the monster has morphed over the decades, and to question its place within the Gothic.
The academic Symposium will take place from 9 am - 6 pm in the Portobello Centre at the University of Sheffield, and will feature a series of academic papers and presentations on reimagining Gothic studies. This event is free but registration is required. Those interested in attending the symposium should fill out a registration form, downloadable as a PDF file here: REGISTRATION FORM
There are a limited number of seats available for the symposium so the numbers will be capped and attendance will be moderated on a first come, first served basis. Spaces for the conference dinner are now full, so that section may be left blank on the form. Please do not delay! Email your completed registration form to reimagininggoth15@gmail.com today!
The Showcase event will take place at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield. The doors open at 10 am, and all are invited to come throughout the day and view the creative Gothic projects on display. There will be mini-presentations, interactive displays, games and projects for children, a charity nail bar, and nibbles. The event will end with a wine reception and talk from our keynote speaker Dr. Xavier Aldana Reyes, a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University and a member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. Dr. Reyes' paper is entitled: “Rethinking the Monstrous-Feminine: The (Un)Gendered Body of Abjection.”
Both the showcase event and the keynote talk are free and open to all, and no registration is required. We invite everyone to come and experience the wonderful papers and projects presented by our delegates, and hopefully discover new ways of ‘reimagining’ the Gothic!
Have questions or concerns? Email us at reimagininggoth15@gmail.com or follow us on twitter at @TheReimagining and @SheffieldGothic
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
A Man of Genius
It's my pleasure to welcome Janet Todd to the salon today; as author of A Man of Genius, Janet is well placed to discuss the role of the genius in the world of Gothic literature.
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My novel A Man of Genius is set in the early years of the nineteenth century, with characters looking back to their youth in the turbulent and radical 1790s. This historical location in the Regency period gives a particular cast and intensity to my central subject: the problem of fatal attraction or romantic addiction. For these are the years when the Genius as a cult figure and focus of female obsession was invented and gained cultural traction. To see evidence of this, it's necessary only to look at the women in the lives of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
That the 'genius' is predominantly male is clear from the example of Byron's contemporary, Jane Austen. She well knew her worth and in many ways she was a professional writer. But she never claimed the status of 'genius' or was regarded as such by her family or contemporary readers, however much they admired her skill.
I am a huge fan (as well as editor and critic) of Jane Austen, who is to me the supreme novelist of this era. But my own creative bent is towards the Gothic, towards the splendid Mrs Radcliffe, author of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and the legion of hack writers, very often women, writing in her mode and in her shadow.
I have made my main character, Ann, one of these jobbing writers who churned out variations on the Gothic motifs for the circulating libraries and popular presses such as the Minerva Press. It gave her a reasonable living and an independence. From childhood onward, Ann is entranced by Gothic fictions and the stories of entrapment, coercion and pursuit.
However, she never expects to live them in real life.
The male anti- hero of my novel is admired as a Romantic genius both by himself and by his male followers--and certainly in the beginning by Ann, whose distorted childhood memories fit her for her adult obsession. The book investigates what happens when the man's self-belief begins to falter and he looks outside to apportion blame, and when the loving woman starts to see the object of her adoration as unworthy, yet still feels as trapped as ever by her obsession.
The background of A Man of Genius is Regency England, ruled over by the debauched Prince Regent, whose persecution of his unwanted and rather louche wife, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, entertains all of Europe. With the end of the long Napoleonic Wars (1815) that grew out of the French Revolution (1789), the old order of kings and aristocrat was re-established throughout the Continent and people of liberal and radical persuasion in England found themselves profoundly at odds with the times, with their government and with the new conservative culture.
Two glamorous cities form the geographical locations of my story. London in victorious Britain, and Venice, defeated and annexed by Austria. London is bustling, the capital now of the most powerful European state, with a vast overseas empire. But it has many disgruntled citizens whose hopes of political and social reform have been dashed during the long French and Napoleonic wars. The government keeps a firm eye on such people, including likely agitators from a crushed Ireland. So it is reasonable that my disaffected characters, several of whom are Irish, suspect surveillance.
My protagonists travel to Venice, where for a time Princess Caroline also (scandalously) stayed. and of course Lord Byron. Venice had a long independent history of 1000 years as an oligarchic republic. It provided popes and grandees for much if Italy and was home to celebrated artists such as Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian. Over the years it had become a rich naval and commercial state with an empire around the Adriatic sea. By the late eighteenth century, however, its power and influence had much diminished and in 1797 the city fell to Napoleon, the conqueror, without much of a fight. The following year Napoleon gave it to his then allies, the Austrians. In 1805 it was back with Napoleon and in 1814 returned to Austria as part of the spoils of the long war. In 1819 when my characters arrive in Venice, the city, so famed for elegance and art, is dilapidated, though its irrepressible inhabitants are still exuberant and stylish. Some accept Austrian 'improvements' to their city, others plot in the shadows.
Although Byron is mentioned in the book, this is not at all about historical characters. My central male figure is not Byron or Shelley--but I have taken some faint hints from the biography I wrote of Mary Shelley and her sister Fanny (Death and the Maidens) and their difficult relationship to Percy Bysshe.
About the Author
Janet Todd has taught literature in Ghana, the US and Britain. She is now Professor Emerita of the University of Aberdeen, a former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College. She is the author of many biographies, critical works, and editions, her most recent books being the Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen and Jane Austen: Her Life, Her Times, Her Novels. A Man of Genius is her first original novel.
http://www.bitterlemonpress.com/blogs/book-extracts/47259267-a-man-of-genius-by-janet-todd
Written content of this post copyright © Janet Todd, 2016.
Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Caroline of Brunswick: Gothic Heroine
I am thrilled to welcome Hannah Moss today with the tale of a very real Gothic heroine!
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Caroline of Brunswick’s Mysterious Warning
In her Gothic parody Northanger Abbey (1818) Jane Austen describes the perils and pitfalls of relating horrid novels to everyday situations with all the wit and verve we know and love her for. It’s all too easy to laugh at the craze for sensationalist Gothic literature when the shock and awe plots of novels churned out by the Minerva Press can seem so unrealistic, but Catherine Morland has a rather illustrious real life forebear in the form of Caroline of Brunswick (1768-1821). The wife of George IV didn’t just read Gothic novels, she cast herself as the Gothic heroine of her own life story – and in many ways she had good reason to do so. The Hanoverians had far more family feuds, secret marriages, adulterous liaisons and illegitimate children than you’ll find in any eighteenth-century Gothic Romance.
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| Caroline of Brunswick |
It has to be said that Caroline was a surprise choice of wife for her cousin George, Prince of Wales. She may have fulfilled the requirements of being a Protestant German princess, but she was passionate, wilful and impulsive by nature. As a teenager her parents had practically kept her under lock and key to prevent her causing a scene in public, but without the social interaction required to polish her manners she lacked refinement. Caroline could hardly be described as an accomplished young lady; her English was bad and her letters showed a disregard for spelling and punctuation – even her personal hygiene was somewhat deficient, and it is rather telling that she remained unmarried at 27. However, Countess Eleonore von Münster, who had been brought in to teach the 15 year-old Caroline in 1783, did succeed on at least one level – and that was by nurturing her young charge’s love of literature. Caroline read voraciously, consuming a diverse range of books. Her literary tastes encompassed everything from religion and history to poetry and plays, but she developed a particular fondness for Gothic novels.
When Caroline arrived in England for her wedding in April 1795 the Prince barely took one glance at her before demanding a glass of brandy and leaving the room, claiming that he felt unwell. Neither of the pair made a good first impression. What’s more, the Prince was far too preoccupied with his latest mistress, the formidable Countess of Jersey (1753-1821), to be concerned with the woman he’d only considered marrying as a means of increasing his income to settle his debts. The Prince treated his mistress as a superior being, and this did not go unnoticed by his slighted wife. Caroline wrote to her mother to complain about Lady Jersey’s hold over her husband and say that she was afraid of what would happen. The Duchess of Brunswick duly passed on these fears to her brother George III, writing in October 1795: ‘I fear some black design, Lady Jersey turns every word the poor Princess says, and her whole thrust is to hurt her in your opinion.’ The Duchess went on to lament that her daughter was ‘frightened out of her senses.’ Did Caroline think her husband and his mistress were plotting against her? Was she scared of being locked away in a castle - or even framed for adultery? She certainly had the overactive imagination to believe it, fuelled by both her novel reading and real life events.
Caroline had every reason to be wary after what had happened to her older sister, Augusta (1764-1788). In a story worthy of a Minerva Press novel, Augusta had married Prince Frederick of Württemberg (1754-1816) in 1780, who at 6ft 11” and weighing 200kg towered over the petite princess and was, by her account, a violent and profligate husband. In 1786 - after having four children together - he cruelly abandoned his wife, blaming her licentious behaviour. However, Augusta’s version of events was that her scheming husband had actually arranged for a man to be caught in her room, but fearing such a plot she had insisted that her maid stayed with her at all times to prove her innocence. Augusta turned to the Russian royal court for sanctuary, but she later fell from Catherine the Great’s favour and was imprisoned for we know not what crime. Then in 1788 the family were suddenly informed of Augusta’s death. Precise details were not forthcoming and the body was never sent to Brunswick, giving rise to fanciful stories that Augusta had in fact escaped. No-one relished the possibility more than Caroline who delighted in recounting the various supposed sightings that were made across Europe, including an appearance in a box at the Genoa opera. The sad truth was that Augusta had actually died in childbirth. She had begun a relationship with Wilhelm von Pohlmann whilst in his custody at Lohde castle and had gone into premature labour with his illegitimate child. Not wanting to reveal their secret by seeking medical assistance, the baby was stillborn and Augusta died of blood loss. Caroline’s literary diet of Gothic novels had taught her to hope that escape was possible, but also alerted her to the dangers a similarly unhappy marriage could present.
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| Augusta of Brunswick |
The Prince and Princess of Wales had been married for a year and had a baby daughter by the time Eliza Parsons dedicated her 1796 novel The Mysterious Warning to Caroline – praising ‘the dignified features’ of the Princess’s character, which have insured ‘the affections of a grateful and admiring people’. The text is one of the seven ‘horrid novels’ which Isabella Thorpe recommends to Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, and Parsons’ overriding message is one of filial obedience; marriage after marriage fails when entered into without parental consent. Given that the Prince had contravened the Royal Marriages Act (1772) by marrying the Roman Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert in secret makes the subject matter particularly relevant. Satirical prints, including Gillray’s ‘The Morning after Marriage’ (1788), had responded to the rumours that an illegal ceremony had taken place in 1785, but Parsons was more likely to have been interested in securing a fashionable patroness than in commenting on the unstable foundations of the Wales’ marriage in dedicating this work to her. Never the less, it is an interesting reminder of how life can imitate art, and vice versa. The plot twists of early Gothic novels definitely don’t seem quite so improbable when compared to the stories of family feuds, female incarceration, adultery and insanity amongst the Hanoverians!
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| Mysterious Warning |
Detested by her own husband and with a limited circle of females of her own rank permitted to see her, Caroline disappeared from view – her conspicuous absence from society duly noted by Lady Palmerston, who described her as ‘our poor captive princess.’ Holed up in Carlton House, Caroline sought solace in reading and would initiate long conversations about literature with the sub-governess Miss Ann Hayman, who was employed to care for Princess Charlotte in 1797. In her letters Miss Hayman records how Caroline was full of praise for Regina Maria Roche’s The Children of the Abbey (1796), which she insisted on lending to her. Caroline may have been guilty of casting herself in the role of persecuted Gothic heroine, but her enthusiasm for such books also helped her to communicate with other women and a create a network of readers from a position of isolation. After all, part of the excitement of reading Gothic novels is undoubtedly sharing what you have read with others.
About the Author
Hannah Moss is a postgraduate student at the University of Sheffield with a research interest in eighteenth-century Gothic novels. In her spare time she is busy writing a biography of Lady Jersey.
Written content of this post copyright © Hannah Moss, 2016.
You can find out more about Caroline's scandalous life and disastrous marriage in Life in the Georgian Court, now available to order worldwide!
Friday, 9 October 2015
Darkness and Light: Exploring the Gothic
News of a wonderful exhibition at the John Rylands Library, Manchester!
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Thursday, 16 July to Sunday, 20 December 2015
Housed in the neo-Gothic grandeur of The John Rylands Library, Darkness and Light reveals how Gothic architecture and anatomy inspired and influenced a literary genre, and how the lasting legacy of Gothic can be found in art, films and subculture today.
From the fantastical to the macabre, this intriguing exhibition unearths Gothic treasures from the Library’s Special Collections to investigate subjects as varied as the role of women in the Gothic movement, advances in medical science and classic literature.
Amongst the fascinating items on display is Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), the first Gothic novel. With a Gothic medieval castle, doomed love and restless spectres of the past, it sets the scene for the genre and sits alongside a whole host of Gothic bestsellers including The Monk, Udolpho and Jekyll and Hyde.
The booklet for this exhibition is available to download as either a PDF or as an accessible, plain text word document:
The exhibition also showcases artwork by students from the University of Salford and a gallery of photographic portraits of 'Goths', celebrating diversity and inviting visitors to explore what Gothic means to them.
Alongside the exhibition, experience a ghostly Gothic tour of the Library or come along to screenings of classic Gothic films, including FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, in the striking Historic Reading Room.
Join the conversation at #JRLGothic
Related Events
2pm-3pm Sunday, 11 October 2015
12noon-1pm Saturday, 7 November 2015
12noon-1pm Saturday, 5 December 2015
12noon-1pm Saturday, 5 December 2015
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