Review: Gothic Utterance

Jimmy Packham, Gothic Utterance: Voice, Speech and Death in the American Gothic. (University of Wales Press, 2021. 256 pages) ISBN 9781786837547 It is difficult to conceive of the Gothic (either as an aesthetic mode or as an historical genre) without voices, be they the disembodied spectral whispers in a haunted castle or the grand, Miltonic …

Review: Gothic Britain

Hughes, William and Ruth Heholt, editors. Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles. (University of Wales Press, 2018. 272 pages) ISBN 9781786832337 This collection by Hughes and Heholt sets out to bring together writing that explore dark or gothic places through a range of writings from various places in …

Review: Theology, Horror and Fiction

By Jonathan Greenaway Theology, Horror, and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 202 pages). ISBN 9781501351785 Religious symbols and persons, whether powerful or in a state of decay, are frequent tropes in the Gothic; but Dr Jonathan Greenaway's new book on Theology, Horror, and Fiction seeks to bring the underlying theology in such …

Review: New Queer Horror

Darren Elliot-Smith and John Edgar Browning (eds.), New Queer Horror: Film and Television (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020. 256 Pages). ISBN 9781786836267 The connections between the queer community and Gothic and Horror are self-evident. Queer-coded monsters, defiant subversions, rebellious identifications are all a familiar part of the horror scene. It’s a connection that arguably …

Review: Embodying Contagion

Sandra Becker, Megen de Bruin-Molé, and Sara Polak (eds.), Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021. 288 pages) ISBN 9781786836908 The acknowledgements of Sandra Becker, Megen de Bruin-Molé and Sara Polak’s collection Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse open with …

Review: Ecogothic Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century

EcoGothic Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century: Phantoms, Fantasy and Uncanny Flowers, ed. Sue Edney (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). 240 pages. ISBN 978-1-5261-4568-0 Over the course of the last year, it is probably safe to assume that those who are lucky enough to have access to gardens have been applying green fingers and tending …

Review: Magical House Protection

By Brian Hoggard. Magical House Protection: the Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft (New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2021. 340 pages) ISBN  9781800730212 Magical House Protection represents nearly 20 years of Brian Hoggard’s dedicated work meticulously recording the physical evidence of counter-magical practices in the British Isles and the US. These are commonly unearthed during renovations and …

Review: Gothic Chapbooks

By Franz J. Potter. Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797-1830 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021. 240 pages) ISBN: 978-1-78683-670-0. Franz J. Potter’s Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797-1830 offers a much-needed, and much-desired, examination of late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century chapbooks. Focusing on the origins of these publications, Potter explores their gothic …

Review: Dangerous Dimensions

Dangerous Dimensions: Mind-bending tales of the Mathematical Weird, ed. Henry Bartholomew. (London: The British Library, 2021. 336 pages) ISBN 978-0712353687 In the introduction to his edited collection in the Tales of the Weird series, Henry Bartholomew outlines the connections between the ‘fictions of the morbid and macabre’ (p.9) and science, pointing out that everything from …

Review: Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre

Edited by Alison Peirse.  (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020. 259 pages). ISBN 9781978805118 Much has been written about women in the horror genre, either as monsters or victims, but Alison Peirse and the contributors in this book take us on an unexplored journey - the 18 chapters of Women Make Horror offer a wide …