Transnational Gothic—Literary and Social Exchanges in the Long Nineteenth Century

Scholars of English literature, most of them in the US, present a variety of perspectives on Gothic literature of the late 18th and 19th centuries, providing a transatlantic view of the emergence and flowering of the Gothic. They cover Old World Gothic and New World frontier, Gothic Catholicism, Anglo-American genre exchanges beyond the novel, and social anxieties and hauntings. Among specific topics are Isaac Mitchell's Alonzo and Melissa as an early example of popular culture, American captivity narratives and Stoker's Dracula, the paradox of Catholicism in New England women's Gothic, lynching and the exorcism of the Black other in Theodore Dreiser's "Nigger Jeff," and the Asian ghost tales of Rudyard Kipling and Lafcadio Hearn. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Monika Elbert is Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at Montclair State University and serves as editor of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. Bridget M. Marshall is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and the author of The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790 - 1860.