Clive Bloom

Violent London

2000 years of riots, rebels, and revolts

This essential guide and reference work provides a unique insight into over 100 years of publishing and reading as well as taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.

Popular Fiction Since 1900

Bestsellers

Gary Day

Owen Clayton

Dealing with moral, political and sexual tensions, this volume provides a forum for male/female dialogue concerning the history, dissemination and consequences of pornographic representaion in film and literature, aiming to challenge established views and inspire further exploration and debate.

Sexuality in Film and Literature

Perspectives on Pornography

11 essays which attempt to combine contemporary literary theory and sound practical criticism from a range of literary approaches. The contributors cover the poetry of John Donne, the theology and impact of The Book of Common Prayer, the politics of Jacobean theatre and other themes.

Rhetoric Representation And The Popular Imagination

Jacobean Poetry And Prose

This series aims to bring to academics, students and general readers the best contemporary criticism on neglected literary and cultural areas. This volume contains 17 critical essays on influential suspense writers of the 20th century.

Twentieth-Century Suspense

This book charts the publishing industry and bestselling fiction from 1900, featuring a comprehensive list of all bestselling fiction titles in the UK. This third edition includes a new introduction which features additional information on current trends in reading including the rise of Black, Asian and LGBTQIA+ publishing; the continuing importance of certain genres and up to date trends in publishing, bookselling, library borrowing and literacy. There are sections on writing for children, on the importance of audiobooks and book clubs, self- published bestsellers as well as many new entries to the present day including bestselling authors such as David Walliams, Peter James, George R R Martin and far less well known authors whose books s sell in their thousands. This is the essential guide to best-selling books, authors, genres, publishing and bookselling since 1900, providing a unique insight into more than a century of entertainment, and opening a window into the reading habits and social life of the British from the death of Queen Victoria to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900

The Romantic Imagination in Crisis

Reading Poe Reading Freud

This is a three-volume sequence exploring key aspects of British culture from 1900 to the present, including essays on the novel, poetry, drama, popular fiction, cinema, radio and the press. When complete it will provide students of English and cultural studies, and cultural history, with a unique survey of the interrelationship of literature and other forms of cultural production in modern British society.

Literature and Culture in Modern Britain

The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic Origins

This highly accessible anthology of Gothic writings and criticism provides an essential guide to the genre. The second edition of this critically acclaimed book has been thoroughly revised to include material from the early gothic and a fresh set of contemporary essays, with a supporting timeline and thought provoking introductory material.

A Guide for Students and Readers

Gothic Horror

Gothic Horror is the essential guide to the literature of terror. This completely revised new edition provides a comprehensive historical primer of essential gothic criticism from its origins in the eighteenth century through Frankenstein and Dracula to the worlds of Hannibal Lecter and Alien Invasion. The volume also includes a new set of contemporary essays with a supporting timeline, and an introduction by Clive Bloom providing an outline of the genre and situating it in its social and cultural context.

This volume presents 13 essays on the Spy Thriller in the 20th century and includes a critical introduction to the subject. Each essay combines historical and aesthetic theory with practical criticism. Authors covered range from Joseph Conrad and John Buchan to Ian Fleming and John Le Carre.

From Buchan to le Carré

Spy Thrillers

A volume of original essays on horror and fantasy writing as a genre and one of the few critical guides to the subject. Creepers concentrates on the rich and neglected vein of British 20th century horror and fantasy, tracing its influences from 19th century vampire-gothic to Christmas ghost tale and exploring the historical, formal and aesthetic concerns of this diverse group of writers.

British Horror and Fantasy in the Twentieth Century

Creepers

This anthology presents classic and contemporary accounts of modern gothic horror writing from Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Stephen King, Clive Barker and many other authors, as well as essays from current literary scholars, providing an essential guide to the genre and the variety of approaches possible when discussing the literature of terror. The whole volume is introduced by Clive Bloom, who offers an outline of the genre and situates it in its social and cultural context.

Gothic Horror: A Guide for Students and Readers

Brian Docherty

An introduction to American drama, aimed at students, academics and serious readers, which is also concerned that the unfamiliar names and forgotten voices of those who made a major contribution to its history, have been unfairly neglected.

American Drama

A comprehensive guide to the history of Gothic from the eighteenth century to the present day that includes original research. >

The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present

Gothic Histories

In the middle of the eighteenth century the Gothic became the universal language of architecture, painting and literature, expressing a love not only of ruins, decay and medieval pageantry, but also the drug-induced monsters of the mind. By explaining the international dimension of Gothicism and dealing in detail with German, French and American authors, Gothic Histories demonstrates the development of the genre in every area of art and includes original research on Gothic theatre, spiritualism, 'ghost seeing' and spirit photography and the central impact of penny-dreadful writers on the genre, while also including a host of forgotten or ignored authors and their biographies. Gothic Histories is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Gothic and its literary double, the horror genre, leading the reader from their origins in the haunted landscapes of the Romantics through Frankenstein and Dracula to the very different worlds of Hannibal Lecter and Goth culture. Comprehensive and up-to-date, it is a fascinating guide to the Gothic and horror in film, fiction and popular culture.

By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination, gave it a new lease of life. Gothic—the literature of disturbance and uncertainty—now produced works that reflected domestic fears, sexual crimes, drug filled hallucinations, the terrible secrets of middle class marriage, imperial horror at alien invasion, occult demonism and the insanity of psychopaths. It was from the 1830s onwards that the old gothic castle gave way to the country house drawing room, the dungeon was displaced by the sewers of the city and the villains of early novels became the familiar figures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Grey and Jack the Ripper. After the death of Prince Albert (1861), the Gothic became darker, more morbid, obsessed with demonic lovers, blood sucking ghouls, blood stained murderers and deranged doctors. Whilst the gothic architecture of the Houses of Parliament and the new Puginesque churches upheld a Victorian ideal of sobriety, Christianity and imperial destiny, Gothic literature filed these new spaces with a dread that spread like a plague to America, France, Germany and even Russia. From 1830 to 1914, the period covered by this volume, we saw the emergence of the greats of Gothic literature and the supernatural from Edgar Allan Poe to Emily Bronte, from Sheridan Le Fanu to Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson. Contributors also examine the fin-de-siècle dreamers of decadence such as Arthur Machen, M P Shiel and Vernon Lee and their obsession with the occult, folklore, spiritualism, revenants, ghostly apparitions and cosmic annihilation. This volume explores the period through the prism of architectural history, urban studies, feminism, 'hauntology' and much more. 'Horror', as Poe teaches us, 'is the soul of the plot'.

The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic

“Simply put, there is absolutely nothing on the market with the range of ambition of this strikingly eclectic collection of essays. Not only is it impossible to imagine a more comprehensive view of the subject, most readers – even specialists in the subject – will find that there are elements of the Gothic genre here of which they were previously unaware.” - Barry Forshaw, Author of British Gothic Cinema and Sex and Film The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic is the most comprehensive compendium of analytic essays on the modern Gothic now available, covering the vast and highly significant period from 1918 to 2019. The Gothic sensibility, over 200 years old, embraces its dark past whilst anticipating the future. From demons and monsters to post- apocalyptic fears and ecological fantasies, Gothic is thriving as never before in the arts and in popular culture. This volume is made up of 62 comprehensive chapters with notes and extended bibliographies contributed by scholars from around the world. The chapters are written not only for those engaged in academic research but also to be accessible to students and dedicated followers of the genre. Each chapter is packed with analysis of the Gothic in both theory and practice, as the genre has mutated and spread over the last hundred years. Starting in 1918 with the impact of film on the genre's development, and moving through its many and varied international incarnations, each chapter chronicles the history of the gothic milieu from the movies to gaming platforms and internet memes, television and theatre. The volume also looks at how Gothic intersects with fashion, music and popular culture: a multi-layered, multi-ethnic, even a trans-gendered experience as we move into the twenty first century.

Clive Bloom

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