Gothic Histories: The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present
"This highly accessible book deals vividly with the taste for Gothic across the last two centuries, and expertly introduces the reader to a range of the weird and the wonderful in literature, in art, and in the sometimes larger-than-life personae of the great figures of Gothic culture." (Professor David Punter, Department of English, University of Bristol, UK)"Clive Bloom has pulled off the very difficult trick of writing a book on the Gothic which tells us something new. He not only manages to cover the early history of this protean and multi-generic aesthetic mode in both its transatlantic and European manifestations but he brings that history right up to date with his treatment of its most recent revivals in the 'Twilight' series. What is especially interesting about this book is its relation of Gothic to nineteenth-century fads for the paranormal and spiritualism and Bloom shows how these also had an influence on the early cinema. There is plenty to enjoy in this lively book. New readers will see it as a comprehensive primer while I cannot imagine that even the most experienced and jaded reader of the Gothic and its massive secondary literature will not find something of fresh interest." (Professor John Simons, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, Australia)"In contrast with countless studies of classic Gothic literature and Gothic architecture, Bloom's book is a wide-ranging examination of the 'gothic sensibility' that keeps the horror genre alive today. Literary icons like Walpole, Lewis and Radcliff receive their due, but Bloom goes much further and deftly interweaves their essential histories and biographies with those of dozens of other artists, playwrights and filmmakers, ever mindful of influential political and religious contexts, to illustrate both the slow evolution of a genre and the undying essence of the gothic. While presenting a broad range of information and ideas, Bloom maintains his enthusiastic focus on the deeply-felt 'human need for the mysterious' that captures the vitality of true gothic art for its first and most devoted audience." (Joseph Maddrey, author/producer of Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film)'Clive Bloom'sGothic Historiesrescues the subject from the cobwebby corner of the ivory tower in which it has recently become confined by the more esoteric branches of academic scholarship. It traces - in engaging, forceful style - the two hundred and fifty year special effect which turned a burlesque, faux medieval tale written by Horace Walpole in mid-eighteenth century Twickenham, via countless variations and remixes, into the global cultural attitude of today. The variations — sometimes fanciful, sometimes furious - include poems, plays, novels, short stories, penny-dreadfuls, pulp magazines, memoirs, polemics, phantasmagorias, horror movies, tv series, contemporary Goth culture and computer games. From the dawn of the Gothic to Twilight. The sublime, the exotic, the transgressive, the dreamlike, the schlocky and the subtle, the other — they are all in here. I enjoyed readingGothic Historiesa lot.' (Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, author of Vampyres and Nightmare: The Birth of Horror, and co-curator of the Tate Britain exhibition Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli to Blake)