Synopses & Reviews
From Anne Rice's best-selling novels to our recurrent interest in vampires and the occult, the Gothic has an unyielding hold on our imagination. But what exactly does "Gothic" mean? How does it differ from "terror" or "horror," and where do its parameters lie? Through a wide and eclectic range of brief essays written by leading scholars,
The Handbook to Gothic Literature provides a virtual encyclopedia of things Gothic. From the Demonic to the Uncanny, the Bronte sisters to Melville, this volume plots the characteristics of Gothic's vastly different schools and manifestations, offering a comprehensive guide of Gothic writing and culture.
Among the many topics and literary figures discussed are: American Gothic, Ambrose Bierce, the Bronte Sisters, Angela Carter, the Demonic, Female Gothic, the Frenetique School, Ghost Stories, Gothic Film, the Graveyard School, Horror, Imagination, Washington Irving, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, Madness, Herman Melville, Monstrosity, Occultism, Orientalism, Post-Colonial Gothic, Anne Radcliffe, Anne Rice, Romanticism, Sado-Masochism, Mary and P. B. Shelley, Bram Stoker, the Sublime, the Uncanny, Vampires, Werewolves, Oscar Wilde, and Zerrissenheit.
Synopsis
This is the first and only complete edition of all the published writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of the feminist movement. Wollstonecraft's writings include fiction, journalism, reviews, and diaries, and confirm her place in history as a signinficant force in the young rationalist movement in education and politics. The set features extensive footnotes, a comprehensive index, a general introduction, and specialist introductions to each selection, and is handsomely bound in pure wdoven cloth over millboard.
About the Author
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money. Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good. Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. Mary died in 1851 at the age of 54 from a brain tumor.