Gothic Literature

A Pathfinder of Online Resources

The following online resources are intended for researchers of gothic literature—both those seeking a general overview of the genre and those searching for detailed information. Most of the sources below provide information about 18th- or 19th-century British and American gothic literature, but some Web site also refer to more modern gothic literature and related literary genres. Note that there is a wealth of full-text gothic literature available on the Web (see E-Texts).

Categories

General Information. 2

Glossaries. 3

Bibliographies. 3

Scholarly Journals and Articles. 3

Discussion Groups. 4

Databases. 4

Digital Exhibits/Collections. 4

Publishers. 6

Some Author-Specific Web Sites. 6

E-Texts: Literary Works Available Online. 8

Additional Resources. 8

General Information

The Gothic Experience

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/gothic/gothic.html

Created by Lilia Melani, an instructor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, the site briefly explains the origins of the gothic novel. The site also includes a link to the OED Online definition of the word “gothic.” The site was last updated in 2002, but its historical and descriptive information is still relevant to the topic.

The Gothic Imagination

http://www.gothic.stir.ac.uk/

This UK Web site provides information about the MLitt program in The Gothic Imagination at Scotland’s University of Stirling. The site attempts to foster discussion on historical and contemporary gothicism. Features include a blog, news about gothic scholarship and Global Gothic: links to articles and information about gothic scholarship worldwide.

The Literary Gothic

http://www.litgothic.com

This Web site is very highly recommended to anyone searching for a broad array of online resources about gothic literature. Jack G. Voller, professor of English, Southern University of Illinois at Edwardsville, created and maintains The Literary Gothic. The Web site covers literary gothicism broadly, including gothic fiction as well as ghost stories, supernaturalism, and gothic-related literary genres up to 1950. The site’s primary objectives are to provide links to other online resources as well as links to e-texts of gothic works. Features include a fairly comprehensive alphabetical list of gothic authors, a title index, and a list of gothic resources online. Each author page features his or her birth and death dates, a summary about the author, and a briefly annotated list of hyperlinks to other resources. There’s also a prose guide for researchers wanting to do academic research on gothic topics.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature

The Romantic Period: Topics: The Gothic

http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/romantic/topic_2/welcome.htm

Provides a general overview of the themes in gothic literature, the history of the genre, and its primary authors. The Web site also features overviews on and excerpts from a few gothic texts, study questions, a list of Web resources, and an index of links to gothic illustrations. The Web site is created by publisher W. W. Norton and Company.

Glossaries

A Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms
http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/goth.html

This Web site is maintained by Douglass H. Thomson, Department of Literature and Philosophy at Georgia Southern University, and features contributions from students at the university. The glossary is an alphabetical index of gothic terms; each entry describes how the terms are used in the context of gothic literature and also gives examples of gothic texts in which the terms are used. The Web site is a good accompaniment to more detailed online scholarship on gothic literature.

Bibliographies

The Sickly Taper
http://thesicklytaper.com/

This comprehensive bibliographic Web site is created and maintained by Fred Frank, professor emeritus of English at Allegheny College in Meadville Pennsylvania. The site includes list of Frank’s many publications on Gothic literature; an index of books, articles, dissertations, and book chapters on the topic; links to publishers of gothic novels, information about new publications on gothic literature, bibliographies of gothic fiction anthologies and collections; and other bibliographies on specific authors and Gothic topics.

Scholarly Journals and Articles

Romantic Circles
http://www.rc.umd.edu/

Romantic Circles is a refereed scholarly Web site focused on Romantic literature and culture and published by the University of Maryland. The site mentions that “Romantic Circles was selected in 1997 by the NEH, the MCI Foundation, and the Council for Great City Schools as one of the 21 best sites on the Internet for education in the humanities and has been participating since then in the EdSITEment program” (About RC, http://www.rc.umd.edu/about/about.html). Articles and other Web pages are searchable by keyword, and the Web site features Praxis Series, reviews, bibliographies, scholarly resources, and pedagogies. The Web site also includes an RC Blog, which is searchable by keyword as well.

Romanticism on the Net:
An International Refereed Journal Devoted to Romantic Studies
http://www.ron.umontreal.ca/

This electronic journal of refereed articles on British Romantic studies has been in existence since 1996. The journal is published by the University of Montréal and is issued about three times per year. Users can search for articles by keyword, author, title, or publication year using the database Érudit, but keep in mind that this is a French-language search engine. The journal also contains book reviews, and the Web site can be used to browse the contents of separate journal issues.

Discussion Groups

Yahoo! Groups: Gothic Literature

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Gothic_Lit/

This Web site is described as an “academic-level” discussion group focused on gothic literature from Horace Walpole to modern neo-Gothic literature. The group can be joined using a freely available Yahoo! ID and password. The Web page specifically states that group members should not post their own fiction or poetry. The group has 336 members and was founded in 1998. The page is available as an RSS feed and can be added to a member’s My Yahoo! page.

Databases

Cyclopaedia of Ghost Story Writers
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~agg/ghosts/

This site, maintained by University of Manchester Research Associate Dr. Alistair Grey Gunn, is a database of short entries of “authors who have written at least one published short story with the theme of haunting or another related aspect of the supernatural during the Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian period.” Short entries provide bibliographic and biographical information on each author; and the database is searchable by author’s last name.

Romantic Circles (see Scholarly Journals and Articles)

Romanticism on the Net (see Scholarly Journals and Articles)

Digital Exhibits/Collections

Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_modern_1.html

This Web page is part of the online guide to “Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature,” an exhibit that ran from 1997 to 1998 at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. The Web site includes a preface on Mary Shelley’s novel, a description of the novel’s relation to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, excerpts from the novel, and quotes about the novel. Of note are the digital images from the exhibit, some of which are in color

The Lewis Walpole Library

http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole/

Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library is a research library maintaining collections of 18th-century British books, manuscripts, prints, drawings and paintings, and decorative art objects, with a particular focus on Horace Walpole, his contemporaries, and the society and culture in which he lived. The library’s holding include approximately two-thirds of the traceable volumes that belonged to Horace Walpole, as well as editions of his own works and those printed at his Strawberry Hill Press. Books in the collection are cataloged in Orbis, Yale’s online library catalog. Many items in the collection have been digitized and are freely viewable online in the Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection, which is searchable by keyword or call number.

Sublime Anxiety: The Gothic Family and the Outsider
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/exhibits/gothic/

This is an exhibit in the Special Collections Department at the University of Virginia Library that consists primarily of items from the Sadleir-Black Collection of Gothic Books as well as other collections in the department. The curator’s introduction (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/exhibits/gothic/natalie.html) to the online exhibit provides a good overview of the literary genre and its progression from its 18th-century origins to the 20th century. The digital exhibit displays pages, including illustrations, from some of the first and second editions of gothic novels in the library’s collection. Web pages on the site focus on the “Northanger Canon,” chapbooks, the Shelleys, Women and the Gothic, the Bronte family, Gothic literature and its relation to British imperialism, the vampire, the novels of Anne Rice, detective novels, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey.

Gothic Gold: The Sadleir-Black Collection of Gothic Fiction

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/collections/sadleir-black/gold.html

This article, originally published in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture in 1998, provides a detailed description of the University of Virginia Library’s Sadleir-Black Collection of Gothic Fiction, gives a history of the collection and its collector Michael Sadleir, and describes the contents of the collection. The article includes hyperlinked endnotes and an appendix on the engravings and woodcuts in the collection’s chapbook. The article was written by Frederick S. Frank, professor emeritus of English at Allegheny College in Meadville Pennsylvania.

Publishers

Valancourt Books
http://www.valancourtbooks.com/

Valancourt Books publishes new editions of rare 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century literature and includes the Gothic Classics series of rare gothic fiction from the 1790s to the 1830s. The series includes the seven "horrid novels" mentioned in Jane Austen's gothic parody Northanger Abbey. The site features a catalogue of publications, a blog and a discussion board as well as links to other publisher and bookseller Web sites.

Zittaw Press
http://www.zittaw.com/

Zittaw Press is a small publisher of rare 18th- and 19th-century gothic texts.
The Press and the site are maintained by Franz J. Potter, assistant professor at National University in Camarillo, California, and visual artist Serena Potter. The Web site features a catalog of publications, a blog providing updates on the press, and a list of resources on Gothic literature, a discussion of the Gothic literary canon, a discussion of the trade gothic, and a Web page specifically devoted to information about 18th-century author Ann Radcliffe.

Some Author-Specific Web Sites

Ann Radcliffe

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/radcliffe

This detailed Web page provides a detailed biography of Ann Radcliffe and is also offers literary theory on the Radcliffe’s works. The site was created in 2003 by Created by Lilia Melani, an instructor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

The Victorian Literary Studies Archive Hyper-Concordance

http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/concordance/radcliffe/

This concordance allows users to search the full text of Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. The program uses C++ technology. The Web site was created by Mitsuharu Matsuoka in the Graduate School or Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, Japan.

The Victorian Web: Ann Radcliffe

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/radcliffe/radcliffeov.html

These Web pages focus on the author Ann Radcliffe and provide her biography, a bibliography of her works, and scholarly articles on religious themes in Radcliffe’s work, genres or modes of her work, and how her writings to those of other authors. The Victorian Web is an online version of Context 61, which is a resource for courses on Victorian literature at Brown University. George P. Landow, professor of English and the History of Art, is the designer and editor of the Web site. The site includes information on pre-Victorian authors (such as Ann Radcliffe) as well as Victorian writers.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus (see Digital Exhibits/Collections)

The Gothic Literature Page: Essays: “The Age of Reason and Decay”

http://members.aol.com/FranzPoet/Fstein.html

This is an essay on Shelley’s novel Frankenstein by Franz J. Potter. Potter is assistant professor at National University in Camarillo, California, and publisher of Zittaw Press.

The Victorian Web: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/mshelley/

The Web site features a detailed biography as well as a detailed Web page on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Phllip V. Allingham, faculty member at Lakehead University in Canada. The Web page on Frankenstein includes a selected list of resources. Web pages include links to related authors and works covered in The Victorian Web.

Horace Walpole

The Lewis Walpole Library (see Digital Exhibits/Collections)

The Literary Encyclopedia: Horace Walpole (1717-1797)

http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4587

This Web page by Paul Baines at the University of Liverpool provides biographical information about Horace Walpole. This online encyclopedia entry also includes a list of Walpole’s works, a list of his contemporaries, and links to other resources about the author.

E-Texts: Literary Works Available Online

Gaslight

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/

This online discussion Web site reviews one story per week from the “genres of mystery, adventure and The Weird, written between 1800 and 1919.” The site makes a large number of e-texts available. Gaslight originated in 1993 as a discussion list and featured a digest of discussion subjects, dates, and participants. The Web site is maintained by Mt. Royal College in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The Web site was last updated in 2004 and no longer appears to provide discussion information, but it is still an excellent source for e-texts.

The Literary Gothic (see General Information)

Additional Resources

Female Gothic Literature

http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/monster.html#gothiclit

This page was created by Dr. Kathleen L. Nichols, a professor of English at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. The web page was last updated in 2002, but there is still a hyperlink from Nichols’ current home page (last updated 2007). This section of Nichols’ Web page (entitled “The Monstrous Feminine in Literature and Art”) features links to a number of online resources about or e-texts of literature by authors Maria Edgeworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Charlotte Bronte. There is also one link apiece for Jean Rhys, Harriet Jacobs, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Louisa May Alcott. The Web page provides many links to Web sites on related literary topics by Dr. Nichols.

The Gothic of Horror Literature

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art27161.asp

This 2007 article by Justin Daniel Davis explores horror literature’s origins in gothic literature. Davis, the Horror Literature editor of BellaOnline (an independent, online publishing community for women) is a language arts teacher and has an MA in humanities from California State University. The article features links to related Web sites and includes an RSS feed.