The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance

E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
A Study of the Gothic Romance
Assistant Lecturer in English Literature in the University of Bristol Formerly Noble Fellow in the University of Liverpool
London Constable & Company Ltd.
1921
The aim of this book is to give some account of the growth of supernatural fiction in English literature, beginning with the vogue of the Gothic Romance and Tale of Terror towards the close of the eighteenth century. The origin and development of the Gothic Romance are set forth in detail from the appearance of Walpole's Castle of Otranto in 1764 to the publication of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820; and the survey of this phase of the novel is continued, in the later chapters, to modern times. One of these is devoted to the Tale of Terror in America, where in the hands of Hawthorne and Poe its treatment became a fine art. In the chapters dealing with the more recent forms of the tale of terror and wonder, the scope of the subject becomes so wide that it is impossible to attempt an exhaustive survey.
The present work is the outcome of studies begun during my tenure of the William Noble Fellowship in the University of Liverpool, 1916-18. It is a pleasure to express here my thanks to Professor R.H. Case and to Dr. John Sampson for valuable help and criticism at various stages of the work. Parts of the MS. have also been read by Professor C.H. Herford of the University of Manchester and by Professor Oliver Elton of the University of Liverpool. To Messrs. Constable's reader I am also indebted for several helpful suggestions.—E.B.
December, 1920.
The antiquity of the tale of terror; the element of fear in myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels. Pp. 1-15.