Gothic Literature General. Ann Radcliffe. Ann Radcliffe Haar eerste roman, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: a Highland Story, verscheen in 1789 en werd een jaar later gevolgd door A Sicilian Romance. Deze werken zetten de toon voor haar volgende boeken: de hoofdpersoon was meestal een onschuldige maar dappere jonge vrouw die verzeild raakte in mysterieuze kastelen met al even geheimzinnige eigenaren. Deze verhalen waren in haar tijd zeer populair en trokken een breed lezerspubliek, waaronder veel jonge vrouwen.
In 1791 verscheen The Romance of the Forest en in 1794 volgde het boek waardoor zij bekend is gebleven en dat uitgroeide tot een klassieker in de Engelse literatuur: The Mysteries of Udolpho. Haar overige werk omvat A Journey through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, een reisverhaal dat werd uitgegeven in 1795 en de romans The Italian (1797) en Gaston de Blondeville, dat in 1825 postuum werd gepubliceerd. In 1834 verscheen nog een verzameling gedichten die eerder in haar romans waren opgenomen. History of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the fictional The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen universe there have been a number of versions of the League, and in particular in the comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier the membership and activities of these Leagues were fully explored, interwoven into an extensive world timeline. 17th Century[edit] Prospero's Men[edit] The first League was established at the behest of England's Queen Gloriana recommending that Italian sorcerer Prospero and his squire Orlando found a group of extraordinary individuals after her death who would operate independently of the government.
This seems to have been done in the hope of establishing a bridgehead between her own faerie realm and the mortal world, via the ethereal Blazing World archipelago in the North Atlantic, in the wake of her successor King Jacob's ruthless purge of faeriekind from the British Isles, and the subsequent retreat of those magical elements from everyday life. 18th Century[edit] 19th Century[edit] Jules Verne. Jules Gabriel Verne (/vɜrn/;[1] French: [ʒyl vɛʁn]; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction.
Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Life[edit] Early life[edit] Nantes from Île Feydeau, around the time of Verne's birth In 1834, at the age of six, Verne was sent to boarding school at 5 Place du Bouffay in Nantes. The sudden marriage sent Verne into deep frustration. Studies in Paris[edit] Paul Féval, père. Paul Henri Corentin Féval, père (29 September 1816 - 8 March 1887) was a French novelist and dramatist. Féval's greatest claim to fame, however, is as one of the fathers of modern crime fiction.
Because of its themes and characters, his novel Jean Diable (1862) can claim to be the world's first modern novel of detective fiction. His masterpiece was Les Habits Noirs (1863–1875), a criminal saga comprising eleven novels. After losing his fortune in a financial scandal, Féval became a born-again Christian, stopped writing crime thrillers, and began to write religious novels, leaving the tale of the Habits Noirs uncompleted. Life[edit] Paul Féval, postcard F. Paul Henri Corentin Féval was born at the Hôtel de Blossac in Rennes in Brittany on 29 September 1816. Féval's break came with the Les Mystères de Londres (1844), a sprawling feuilleton written to cash in on the success of Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris. In 1882, Paul Féval was again ruined, the victim of an embezzler. Sources[edit] Robert Louis Stevenson. A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the world.[1] His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov,[2] J.
M. Barrie,[3] and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins. Life[edit] Childhood and youth[edit] Daguerreotype portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson as a young child Stevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson's parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of seven Education[edit] What a damned curse I am to my parents! The Body Snatcher. The Body Snatcher (1884) is a short story by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. First published in the Pall Mall Christmas "Extra", in December 1884, the story is based on characters in the employ of Robert Knox, around the time of the Burke and Hare murders.
Plot summary[edit] The story begins with a group of friends sharing a few drinks, when an eminent doctor, Wolfe MacFarlane, enters. One of the friends, Fettes, recognizes the name and angrily confronts the new arrival. Although his friends all find this behaviour suspicious, none of them can understand what might lie behind it . It transpires that MacFarlane and Fettes had attended medical school together, under the famous professor of anatomy, Robert Knox. Their duties included taking receipt of bodies for dissection, and paying the pair of shifty and suspicious men who supplied them. On one occasion, Fettes identifies a body as that of a woman he knew, and is convinced she has been murdered. External links[edit] Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde.[1] It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. The work is commonly associated with the rare mental condition often spuriously called "split personality", referred to in psychiatry as dissociative identity disorder, where within the same body there exists more than one distinct personality.[4] In this case, there are two personalities within Dr Jekyll, one apparently good and the other evil; completely opposite levels of morality.
Inspiration and writing[edit] Robert Louis Stevenson "In the small hours of one morning,[...]I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's stepson, wrote: Plot[edit] Dr. Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Godwin's mother died when she was eleven days old; afterwards, she and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, were raised by her father.
When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont. Godwin provided his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories. Biography Early life Page from William Godwin's journal recording "Birth of Mary, 20 minutes after 11 at night" (left column, four rows down) Percy Bysshe Shelley. Frankenstein. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823. Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments.[1][2][3] Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley.
Summary[edit] Composition[edit] Bram Stoker. Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned. Early life[edit] Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland.[1] His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876), from Dublin, and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who was raised in County Sligo.[2] Stoker was the third of seven children, the eldest of whom was Sir Thornley Stoker, 1st Bt.[3] Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there.
Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Early career[edit] Lyceum Theatre[edit] Bram Stoker's Dracula. Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American horror fantasy erotic drama film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.[3][4][5] It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.
Bram Stoker's Dracula was greeted by a generally positive critical reception and was a box office hit, although Reeves' performance has been widely criticised. Its score was composed by Wojciech Kilar and featured "Love Song for a Vampire" by Annie Lennox, which became an international hit, as the closing credits theme. Plot[edit] In 1462, Vlad Dracula, a member of the Order of the Dragon, returns from a victory against the Turks to find his wife, Elisabeta, has committed suicide after receiving a false report of his death. In 1897, newly qualified solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R.
Cast[edit] [edit] Vlad the Impaler. Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431–1476/77), was a member of the House of Drăculești, a branch of the House of Basarab, also known by his patronymic name: Dracula. He was posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Țepeș pronounced [ˈvlad ˈt͡sepeʃ]), and was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462, the period of the incipient Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. His father, Vlad II Dracul, was a member of the Order of the Dragon, which was founded to protect Christianity in Eastern Europe.
Vlad III is revered as a folk hero in Romania as well as other parts of Europe for his protection of the Romanian population both south and north of the Danube. A significant number of Romanian and Bulgarian common folk and remaining boyars (nobles) moved north of the Danube to Wallachia, recognized his leadership and settled there following his raids on the Ottomans.[1] Name[edit] Bust of Vlad the Impaler in Sighișoara, his place of birth Family[edit] Early life[edit] Gnostic. M. R. James. Early influences[edit] Scholarly works[edit] James is best known for his ghost stories, but his work as a medieval scholar was prodigious and remains highly respected in scholarly circles. Indeed, the success of his stories was founded on his antiquarian talents and knowledge. His discovery of a manuscript fragment led to excavations in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, in 1902, in which the graves of several twelfth-century abbots described by Jocelyn de Brakelond (a contemporary chronicler) were rediscovered, having been lost since the Dissolution.
His 1917 edition of the Latin Lives of Saint Aethelberht, king and martyr (English Historical Review 32), remains authoritative. He catalogued many of the manuscript libraries of the Cambridge colleges. James also achieved a great deal during his directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge [1893–1908]. James was Provost of Eton College from 1918 to 1936.[1] He died in 1936 and was buried in Eton town cemetery. Ghosts & Scholars, Montague Rhodes James, M.R. James Newsletter. "Shortly before his death I asked him what he really thought on the subject, since he had written better ghost-stories than any man living. He answered: 'Depend upon it! Some of these things are so, but we do not know the rules! '" --- Shane Leslie on M.R. James. Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and later of Eton, was a noted medieval scholar, antiquary, and expert on Bible apocrypha.
He also authored some of the greatest and most influential ghost stories in the English language. There are approximately forty of his supernatural tales (some incomplete), most of which were published in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), A Warning to the Curious (1925) and The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. M.R. The Newsletter is edited by Rosemary Pardoe (pardos@globalnet.co.uk); with assistant editors, David Rowlands and Steve Duffy.
Issue 21 (April 2012) of The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. Jamesian News. Gothic fiction. Romance, horror and death literary genre Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name refers to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels. Characteristics[edit] Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.[2][3] The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past, especially through ruined buildings which stand as proof of a previously thriving world which is decaying in the present.[4] Especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, characteristic settings include castles, religious buildings like monasteries and convents, and crypts.
Gothic fiction often moves between "high culture" and "low" or "popular culture".[3][clarification needed] Role of architecture[edit] The Female Gothic[edit] History[edit] Notes[edit] List of Gothic Fiction works. The Literary Gothic - *the* webguide to pre-1950 Gothic & supernaturalist literature. General Gothic fiction and horror literature resources. Edgar Allan Poe.