Gothic Novels

This is an anthology of six foundational texts for the Gothic genre, from its inception in 1764 through to its evolution in highly developed narratives by 1820. The anthology provides headnotes and introductions that place the gothic genre in its cultural and historical context, relate works to their contemporary reception, and make distinctions between gothic and the related forms of oriental and Jacobin fiction. The texts provided are: Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" (1765), Clara Reeve's "The Old English Baron" (1778), William Beckford's "Vathek" (1786), Ann Radcliffe's "The Romance of the Forest" (1791), Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus" (1818), and Charles Maturin's "Tale of the Spaniard" from "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820).