The Gothic Novel 1790–1830

Plot Summaries and Index to Motifs

Ann B. Tracy

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813186689
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A research guide for specialists in the Gothic novel, the Romantic movement, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel, and popular culture, this work contains summaries of more than two hundred novels, reputed to be Gothic, published in English between 1790 and 1830. Also included are indexes of titles and characters and an extensive index of characteristic objects, motifs, and themes that recur in the novels—such as corpses, bloody and otherwise, dungeons, secret passageways, filicide, fratricide, infanticide, matricide, patricide, and suicide.

The novels described, including those by such writers as Charlotte Dacre, Louisa Sidney Stanhope, Regina Maria Roche, Charles Maturin, and Mary Shelley, are for the most part out of print and circulation and are unavailable except in rare book rooms. Thus this book provides the researcher with ready access to information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.

Index to Motifs

The index that follows should not be regarded as exhaustive. First, some major elements have been omitted by design. Castles, for instance, are so pervasive a device that no purpose can be served by the recitation of two hundred novels that have them; similarly, the abundance of murders in the novels argued the retention for the index of specialized murders only — matricide, ax murder, suicide, and so on. Second, the reader should understand that some novels have been more thoroughly indexed than others. Those read or reread under clement circumstances were indexed page by page, but others were read under pressure of time or indexed from plot notes taken in other years for other purposes. And while plot notes are likely to include incest and banditti, they may well overlook such subtler elements as presentiments or unfinished deathbed speeches.

The index should have a number of uses. Most conspicuously, it can lead scholars with particular interests — cav...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Summaries
• Index to Motifs
• Index of Characters
• Index of Titles