A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares [Paperback]

Robert Mighall (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199262187 | ISBN-13: 978-0199262182 | Publication Date: May 29, 2003

This is the first major full-length study of Victorian Gothic fiction. Combining original readings of familiar texts with a rich store of historical sources, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction is an historicist survey of nineteenth-century Gothic writing--from Dickens to Stoker, Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle, through European travelogues, sexological textbooks, ecclesiastic histories and pamphlets on the perils of self-abuse. Critics have thus far tended to concentrate on specific angles of Gothic writing (gender or race), or the belief that the Gothic 'returned' at the so-called fin de si�cle. Robert Mighall, by contrast, demonstrates how the Gothic mode was active throughout the Victorian period, and provides historical explanations for its development from late eighteenth century, through the 'Urban Gothic' fictions of the mid-Victorian period, the 'Suburban Gothic' of the Sensation vogue, through to the somatic horrors of Stevenson, Machen, Stoker, and Doyle at the century's close. Mighall challenges the psychological approach to Gothic fiction which currently prevails, demonstrating the importance of geographical, historical, and discursive factors that have been largely neglected by critics, and employing a variety of original sources to demonstrate the contexts of Gothic fiction and explain its development in the Victorian period.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An important and robustly argumentative definition of the Gothic.... [It] redraws the critical map."--John Sutherland, Independent on Sunday

"Mighall's command of the primary and secondary literature makes for illuminating readings of many contributors to Victorian fiction, both great and small."--Choice

About the Author

Robert Mighall is Editor of Penguin Classics at Penguin Books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 342 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199262187
• ISBN-13: 978-0199262182
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,573,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Coulda been a contender, November 29, 2003

By 

Charlus "charlus" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares (Paperback)

I was drawn to this author's full-length work of lit crit by his critical apparatus to the Penguin "Picture of Dorian Gray", which was one of the most useful introduction and notes I've come across: lucid, insightful and showed me things I wouldn't have noted myself. So it was with high expectations I ordered and read this volume.

And, happily, it met these expectations in part. The opening chapters avoid theoretical academese and offer a viable way of reading Victorian Gothic fiction. However, the longer the book goes on, the more repetitive it becomes and offers sentences such as:

"Whilst it has been suggested that appropriate location still played a part in staging this return as Gothic scenario, by establishing the modernity of the context into which the atavistic past intrudes, the taxonomical focus on "development" as a measure of contemporaneity meant that as an individual could "embody" the past, then atavism could potentially crop up anywhere". (p.153)

You see my point.

The latter chapters alternate falling into this technospeak, and the arguments become simultaneously less cogently argued and more diffuse. Ultimately I found myself skimming the very end as I finally lost patience with the book.

Mr. Mighall stands at the decision point whether to pursue a writing career based on the lucid persona of the Penguin introductions (his Dr. Jekyll, so to speak) or the obfuscation and diffuse arguments of his Academic writings (his Mr. Hyde). Once down one path, it can easily overwhelm the other. He is well too aware of the dangers of leading a double life.