April 2014

The first ever gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto marked the beginnings of a genre that is still popular today.

Horace Walpole was a politician and a man of letters. His house in Twickenham began a revival in gothic architecture, and the publication of The Castle of Otranto in 1764 sparked the vogue for gothic romance in English literature.

The preface to the first edition of the novel, published under a pseudonym, stated that it was a translation of a 16th-century Italian manuscript recounting a story dating back to the Crusades. As a literary hoax it was a huge success.

The novel begins with the impending marriage of Conrad, son the lord of the Castle Otranto, to Isabella. On the day of the marriage, Conrad is mysteriously killed by a helmet that falls from the sky and crushes his skull. Remembering a curse on the inhabitants of the Castle of Otranto that, should they become too proud, they will be replaced by another family, Conrad’s father Manfred panics. He sends his wife, Hippolita, to a convent and decides he will marry Isabella himself and attempt to continue his line.

Aided by a noble peasant, Theodore, Isabella escapes to Friar Jerome who gives her sanctuary. Infuriated at her attempt to thwart him, Manfred sets out to get Isabella back. He finds Theodore and sentences him to death. Jerome realizes that Theodore is his son and begs Manfred to spare his life. Manfred makes the deal that if Jerome gives Isabella up, Theodore can live.

A group of knights arrive on the scene and chaos ensues as the knights are enlisted to help save Isabella from Manfred. Theodore is locked in a tower by Manfred before he can help find Isabella.
Locked in the tower, helpless, Theodore has lost hope, but he is saved by Matilda, Manfred’s daughter. After Matilda releases him, Theodore joins the race to find Isabella and manages to reach her first. A fight ensues during which Theodore wounds one of the knights, who turns out to be Isabella’s father, Frederic.

Everyone gathers back at the castle of Otranto. Frederic falls for Matilda and he and Manfred discuss each marrying the other’s daughter. Manfred suspects that there is a romance between Theodore and Isabella. Going to the chapel to expose them, he takes a dagger and, in a jealous rage, he stabs Matilda, mistaking her for Isabella.

Soon afterwards, it is revealed that Theodore is the true Prince of Otranto. While Manfred wallows in self-pity, shame, and despair at the slaughtering of his own daughter, Theodore and Isabella marry.

Walpole famously declared that ‘the world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think’. The Castle of Otranto established both the stock characters of the gothic genre (evil tyrant, virtuous maiden, noble hero) and its themes (the supernatural, incest, mistaken identities). By turns lurid, sensational and amusing, it remains a powerful and imaginative tour de force.

‘But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.’

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen began writing her first book at the age of 23. This book was Northanger Abbey, a parody of the Gothic genre, which had steadily been gaining popularity since its inception in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.

Northanger Abbey is sometimes mistakenly labelled a gothic romance, but it is, in fact, a gothic parody because, in it, Jane Austen satirises the conventions of the gothic novels that were popular during the time. In particular, Austen is said to have targeted Anne Radcliffe, the author of gothic novels such as A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Catherine reads Udolpho during her time at Bath, and it is implied that she has read similar novels before. Isabella has a whole library of gothic novels that the women plan to read together once Catherine has finished Udolpho.

Gothic novels and their conventions are a recurring theme throughout the novel. On the ride from Bath to Northanger Abbey, Henry invents a humorous hypothetical story about Catherine’s first night in Bath, making subtle references to several different gothic novels, most of which were well-known at the time.

Two other sequences in the book poke fun at the genre. In one, Catherine unlocks a mysterious cabinet, expecting it to contain something horrible, only to find laundry bills. In another, Catherine imagines that the General is a wife-murderer and goes to investigate the late Mrs Tilney’s bedroom. When Henry catches her at this task and scolds her, it is not as amusing as Catherine’s discovery of the laundry bills. Catherine is terribly embarrassed in front of Henry. In the scenes leading up to this confrontation, it is almost disturbing to read of Catherine’s paranoid assumptions that everything the General does stems from a guilty conscience. Catherine becomes almost unhinged by her own imagination. Although the actual crime turns out to be non-existent, Austen captures some of the psychological tension typical of gothic novels by chronicling Catherine’s delusional state. So, although she parodies the gothic genre, Austen also makes clever use of some of its techniques. 

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on August 30, 1797, in London. She was the daughter of philosopher and political writer William Godwin and famed feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Her mother died shortly after her birth. Her father William Godwin was left to care for Mary and her older half-sister Fanny Imlay, who was Wollstonecraft’s daughter from an affair she had with a soldier.

The household had a number of distinguished guests during Mary’s childhood, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. While she didn’t have a formal education, she made great use of her father’s extensive library. She could often be found reading, sometimes by her mother’s grave.

Mary also found a creative outlet in writing. According to The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, she said: “As a child, I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to ‘write stories.'”

In 1814, Mary began a relationship with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a student of her father. He was still married to his first wife when he and teenager, Mary, fled England together that same year. Mary’s actions alienated her from her father who refused to speak to her.

Mary and Shelley travelled about Europe. They struggled financially and faced the loss of their first child in 1815 when Mary gave birth to a baby girl who only lived for a few days. The following summer, the Shelleys were in Switzerland with Jane Clairmont, Lord Byron and John Polidori. The group entertained themselves one rainy day by reading a book of ghost stories. Byron suggested that they all should try their hand at writing their own horror story. It was at this time that Mary Shelley began work on what would become her most famous novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

Later that year, Mary suffered the loss of her half-sister Fanny, who committed suicide. Another suicide, this time of Shelley’s wife, occurred a short time later. Mary and Shelley were finally married on December 1816. In 1818, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus debuted as a new novel from an anonymous author. Many thought that Percy Bysshe Shelley had written it since he penned its introduction. The book proved to be a huge success. That same year, the Shelleys moved to Italy.

While Mary seemed devoted to her husband, she did not have the easiest marriage. Their union was riddled with adultery and heartache, including the death of two more of their children. Born in 1819, their son, Percy Florence, was the only child to live to adulthood. Mary’s life was rocked by another tragedy in 1822 when her husband drowned while out sailing with a friend in the Gulf of Spezia.

Widowed at the age of 24, Mary Shelley worked hard to support herself and her son. She wrote several more novels, including Valperga and the science fiction tale The Last Man (1826). She also devoted herself to promoting her husband’s poetry and preserving his place in literary history.

Mary Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851 in London. She was buried at St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth, alongside her father and mother and with the cremated remains of her late husband’s heart.

The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) is a novel in the gothic genre, written by the English author Ann Radcliffe. The events are set in 1764, thirty-three years before the novel’s publication. It is the last book Radcliffe published during her lifetime (although she did go on to produce the novel Gaston de Blondeville, which appeared posthumously in 1826). The Italian has a dark, mysterious and sombre atmosphere, and concerns the themes of love, devotion and persecution by the Holy Inquisition. It also deals with issues prevalent at the time of the French Revolution, such as religion, aristocracy and nationality. Radcliffe’s renowned use of veil imagery is considered to have reached its height of sophistication and complexity in The Italian. Concealment and disguise are central themes of the novel.

The story is set in the 18th century Italy, where a young nobleman of Naples, Vincentio di Vivaldi, meets a beautiful damsel Ellena Rosalba, with whom he falls in love and whom he intends to marry. Vincentio’s mother, the Marchesa, is against the match and, goaded by a mysterious monk named Schedoni, has Ellena kidnapped. Vincentio nearly marries Ellena, but both are arrested and separated by Schedoni’s subordinates before the nuptial ceremony is completed. Schedoni then attempts to assassinate the girl, but suddenly discovers that she is in fact his own daughter. Schedoni’s plans change radically and he hides Ellena in a safe place. Meanwhile, Vincentio, transported into a prison of Inquisition, struggles to disprove false charges against him. Schedoni appears at the trial, and after several unexpected revelations Vincentio is acquitted. Following a complex twist in the plot, Ellena is revealed to be Schedoni’s niece, rather than his daughter. Her real father, Schedoni’s brother is dead. It turns out that Schedoni descends from an old and noble family, and therefore Ellena becomes an eligible match for Vincentio. The novel ends with a happy marriage between the two, and the villains—the Marchesa, Schedoni, Spalatro, and Nicola—all die.

Excerpt:
The carriage having reached the walls, followed their bendings to a considerable extent. These walls, of immense height, and strengthened by innumerable massy bulwarks, exhibited neither window or grate, but a vast and dreary blank; a small round tower only, perched here and there upon the summit, breaking their monotony.
The prisoners passed what seemed to be the principal entrance, from the grandeur of its portal, and the gigantic loftiness of the towers that rose over it; and soon after the carriage stopped at an arch-way in the walls, strongly barricadoed. one of the escort alighted, and, having struck upon the bars, a folding door within was immediately opened, and a man bearing a torch appeared behind the barricado, whose countenance, as he looked through it, might have been copied for the ‘Grim-visaged comfortless Despair of the poet.
No words were exchanged between him and the guard; but on perceiving who were without, he opened the iron gate, and the prisoners, having alighted, passed with the two officials beneath the arch, the guard following with a torch. They descended a flight of broad steps, at the foot of which another iron gate admitted them to a kind of hall; such, however, it at first appeared to Vivaldi, as his eyes glanced through its gloomy extent, imperfectly ascertaining it by the lamp, which hung from the centre of the roof. No person appeared, and a death-like silence prevailed; for neither the officials nor the guard yet spoke; nor did any distant sound contradict the notion, that they were traversing the chambers of the dead. To Vivaldi it occurred, that this was one of the burial vaults of the victims, who suffered in the Inquisition, and his whole frame thrilled with horror. Several avenues, opening from the apartment, seemed to lead to distant quarters of this immense fabric, but still no footstep whispering along the pavement, or voice murmuring through the arched roofs, indicated it to be the residence of the living.

Victoria Holt was one of the many pseudonyms of Eleanor Alice Burford Hibbert.  She also wrote as Jean Plaidy and Philippa Carr.

Eleanor Hibbert was born in London in 1906. Her first book, Daughter of Anna, was published in 1941. She went on to publish twenty-nine more novels as Eleanor Burford over the next two decades, all were romances featuring youthful protagonists and bearing titles like Passionate Witness (1941) and The House at Cupid’s Cross (1949).

But it was the pseudonyms she adopted later that were to win her international fame. In 1945, she began writing as Jean Plaidy, a name she borrowed from a Cornish beach. During the 1950s and 60s, she was Britain’s most popular historical novelist, publishing ninety books under that name. The last one in 1994 was published posthumously. She wrote compelling stories of the lives of such figures as Catherine de Medici, Katherine of Aragon, Isabella of Spain and Lucrezia Borgia. I read and loved every single one of them! The one I have read most and which made the most impact of me was The Princess of Celle, the story of tragic Sophia Dorothea.

As Elbur Ford, she wrote four novels (1950-1954) based on infamous murderers of the 19th century. As Kathleen Kellow, she wrote another eight novels between 1952 and 1960. Several of the latter were also mysteries. She also wrote one book as Anna Percival and five as Ellalice Tate.

It was in 1960 that she first used the name Victoria Holt. Her first book under this pseudonym was the gothic classic, Mistress of Mellyn. It featured the heroine, a young governess, Martha Leigh, a powerful, enigmatic hero, Con TreMellyn, a haunted mansion and a heady mix of scandal, misunderstanding and betrayal. Rumour abounded that the book had actually been written by Daphne du Maurier.

Other titles by Victoria Holt included Kirkland Revels (1962) with ghosts, mysterious abbey, and innocent heroine in jeopardy and Menfreya in the Morning (1966), reminiscent of du Maurier’s Rebecca. All of the traditional gothic elements were included, but the books still possessed a story-telling power that made Holt’s work superior to the multitude who attempted to imitate her.

Hibbert also wrote as Philippa Carr. These were family sagas rather than romances. The Daughters of England series began with The Miracle at St. Bruno’s (1972), a sixteenth-century saga that featured Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Sir Thomas More and ended with We’ll Meet Again (1993), set against the backdrop of the end of World War II.

Hibbert’s pace of writing was phenomenal. She wrote for five hours a day, seven days a week, usually completing five thousand words by lunchtime. Her afternoons were devoted to answering the letters she received from fans. She even took her typewriter with her on her annual winter cruises so that she could continue working.

She died at the age of 87 on board a cruise ship, the Sea Princess, between Athens and Port Said, Egypt. She had sold more than 100 million copies of her two hundred books written over a career that spanned more than half a century. She wrote Gothic romance, historical fiction, mystery, children’s books, and non-fiction. Her advice to writers is as sound today as it was when she gave it decades ago. ‘Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience’.

What are the features of gothic romance that make it unique, and make it stand out from other genre? Gothic romances are love stories with a dash of horror! Romances that scare the life out of you!  And Harlequin Shivers are the ‘new’ gothics. They have elements of the unexplained, but they are not paranormal romances. Generally, the heroine and heroine are human beings who may have paranormal experiences. Shivers have high levels of sensuality, but their strong gothic story line makes them much more than an erotic romance. Some of the features of the gothic genre are:

The Setting
This is the most important part of the planning process for a writer of gothic novels. Poetic, gloomy and atmospheric, the setting is another character. It is often a remote building, possibly of medieval origin, for example a castle, abbey or crumbling manor house.
Think wild mysterious landscapes-bleak moors, hard to reach islands or deep, inaccessible valleys.
Enclosed or claustrophobic spaces are also symbolic in gothic writing-crypts, passageways, caves, dungeons, secret rooms, dark towers, cloisters…

The Male Protagonist

• May have inherited powers or status-so he might be titled or talented
• May be solitary or egocentric
• Is likely to be a flawed personality
• May be obsessive
• We may get a sense of duality, or even that there is a doppleganger
• He  may attract yet repulse,  and the sensual elements can be overt or implied

The Female Protagonist
Our heroine has grown up since the days of Jane Eyre! Traditionally, she was a trembling victim, frail, passive and naïve, who was subjected to grotesque acts by a superior will.
Now, however, she is likely to be strong and feisty. She may well have many of the same characteristics as the male protagonist. And she will fight back!

Gothic Themes

• Crossing boundaries-natural/supernatural, barbaric/civilised, mortal/immortal, pleasure/pain
• Evokes fear and tension in the reader
• Dark secrets and forbidden knowledge
• Superstitions-curses, angels, demons, vampires, witches etc.
• Dreams and nightmares reveal unconscious mind
• Omens and portents
• Symbolism

You know when you watch a scary film (usually through your fingers) and that character who is alone in the house goes into the attic (or maybe the cellar) to find out what the unexplained noises are? That’s why I write gothics.

When we see those scenes in films, or read them in books, we usually switch all the lights on before we sigh with relief and say, “You wouldn’t do that in real life. You’d run screaming out of the door.” But we still love to watch or read those scenes…because they give us shivers. 

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish journalist and writer, credited with being the ‘father of the Victorian ghost story’. While he is best known for his novel about the ‘venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed’ Uncle Silas it was his vampire novella Carmilla that defined his work and influenced Bram Stoker in his writing of Dracula.

Le Fanu was born in 1814 to noble Huguenot parents Thomas Philip Le Fanu, a clergyman, and Emma Lucretia Dobbin. In 1833 he entered Trinity College, Dublin to study law, graduating in 1839. He was called to the bar but never practiced, instead embarking on a career in journalism. In 1838 Le Fanu’s first story The Ghost and the Bonesetter was published in the Dublin University Magazine, which he was to become proprietor and editor of in 1861.

In 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett with whom he had 4 children. Sir Walter Scott was to influence his first novel The C’ock and Anchor (1845). His second novel The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O’Brien was published in 1847. In 1851 Le Fanu and Susanna moved to their house on Merrion Square, Dublin, where he lived until his death in 1873.

Excerpt from Carmilla (1872): ‘I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.’

Born on the 13th May 1907 Daphne du Maurier was the second daughter of Sir Gerald du Maurier and the granddaughter of George du Maurier. She grew up in London with her sisters Angela and Jeanne and was educated at home by her governess. She had a close relationship with her father and it was he who encouraged her when she began writing stories and poetry at an early age.

The du Mauriers visited Cornwall for holidays throughout Daphne’s childhood, but it was not until 1926 that the family decided to look for a second home there. Arriving in Bodinnick-by-Fowey from Looe, Daphne, her mother and her two sisters discovered Ferryside, the house that was to become their home.

Daphne loved Cornwall and spent time at Ferryside whenever she could, it was there that she wrote her first novel The Loving Spirit.

It was this book that was to introduce Daphne to her future husband. Major Tommy (‘Boy’) Browning was so affected by the book that he sailed to Fowey to meet the author. They fell in love and in July 1932 were married at Lanteglos Church.

During the first ten years of their marriage Daphne only spent holidays in Cornwall but in 1943 while her husband was at war she rented a house in Fowey called Readymoney and lived there with her three children.

Years before whilst out walking she first discovered Menabilly, a house belonging to the Rashleigh family. She was fascinated by the place and now she was living in Cornwall she asked the family if she could rent the property. They agreed and in 1943 she moved into the house which was to provide inspiration for much of her writing.

When the lease on Menabilly expired in 1969 she moved to another house rented to her by the Rashleigh family, Kilmarth about a mile from Menabilly. By now Daphne had lived in Cornwall for nearly thirty years and it was by continuing her writing she was able to overcome her disappointment that her husband, who died in 1965, was not with her in her last home.

Dame Daphne du Maurier died on the 19th April 1989. Throughout her lifetime she wrote several novels and volumes of short stories, five biographies and her own autobiography. The place Cornwall held in her heart and the inspiration it provided was captured in many of her books.

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816, the third daughter of the Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria. Her brother Patrick Branwell was born in 1817, and her sisters Emily and Anne in 1818 and 1820. In the same year the Brontë family moved to Haworth. Mrs. Brontë died the following year.

In 1824 the four eldest Brontë daughters were enrolled as pupils at the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge. The following year Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest daughters, became ill, left the school and died. Charlotte and Emily, understandably, were brought home.

In 1826 Mr. Brontë brought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Ann, playing with the soldiers, conceived of and began to write in great detail about, an imaginary world which they called Angria.

In 1831 Charlotte became a pupil at the school at Roe Head, but she left the following year to teach her sisters at home. She worked as a governess and attempted, with her sisters to open a school. This venture proved unsuccessful.

In 1846 Charlotte decided to publish a selection of the poems of all three sisters under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte also completed The Professor, which was rejected for publication. The following year, however, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Ann’s Agnes Grey were all published, still under the Bell pseudonyms.

In 1848 Charlotte and Ann visited their publishers in London, and revealed the true identities of the ‘Bells’. In the same year Branwell Brontë, by now an alcoholic and a drug addict, died, and Emily died shortly thereafter. Ann died the following year.

In 1849 Charlotte went to London and began to move in literary circles, making the acquaintance of Thackeray and others. In 1850 Charlotte edited her sister’s works, and met Mrs. Gaskell. In 1851she visited the Great Exhibition in London, and attended a series of lectures given by Thackeray.

Charlotte became engaged to Mr Nicholls , the curate at Haworth, and they were married soon after. In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia and died, probably of dehydration.
In 1857 The Professor, which had been written in 1845-46, was published posthumously and Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë was published.