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My first encounter with the Gothic precedes my knowledge of the existence of Gothic itself. As such, it can be quite difficult to pinpoint exactly where that encounter manifested…

I’ve told this story before, I’m sure I have, but that’s the very nature of Gothic, isn’t it. It keeps coming back. My family background is an interesting mix of very down to earth farmers and people who cannot pass a bookshop without a purchase. There were always books in the house and I was always encouraged to read. To read for myself that is. For the longest time, I was quite upset that adults wouldn’t read to me until I fully understood reading myself also meant I was in control of what I read.

Around three hundred years ago, the Industrial Revolution increased the print left by human activity on planet Earth. In 2000, Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, the well-known atmospheric scientists, coined the term “Anthropocene” as a geological designation associated with the perceived and quantifiable impact of humankind on the ecological functioning of the planet’s atmosphere.

When we set out to write this book, we had in mind more than the preoccupation with travel that has marked the Gothic from its earliest moments. What caught our eye or, perhaps, our ear was the eerie footfall generated by Gothic journeys, as well as the power they possess to lead us into unfamiliar territory and to follow us home, dogging our steps wherever we go.

Neither of my parents like horror but, luckily for me, my mum has poor memory. So it was that, when I was five and enamoured of Roald Dahl, she let me watch an episode of Tales of the Unexpected.

This is the post I never thought or wished I could write.

A Gothic-Without-Borders Conference - September 29th to October 2nd 2023, fully online

The International Gothic Association is pleased to invite submissions to their biennial Postgraduate Student Essay Prize.

Monstrous Women and Ecofeminism in the Victorian Gothic, Penny Dreadfuls: Investigations of Pernicious Tales of Terror and Penny Bloods: Gothic Tales of Dangerous Women

“Horrors belong as naturally to the fireside, as fireside belongs to Christmas” declares the narrator of the piece “Fireside Horrors for Christmas” in the December 1847 issue of Dublin University Magazine.

This may come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, given I have ended up writing about some truly gruesome texts in my adult life, but I was quite squeamish as a child.

It’s almost impossible to pin down the earliest memory of gothic in my life. As I was growing up, Italian TV was not as strictly regulated as it is in the UK and I was exposed to all sorts of age-inappropriate materials, particularly coming from Japanese manga.