The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800

Literary and historical study of supernatural or Gothic fiction of the Romantic period.

E. J. Clery (Author)

9780521664585, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 August 1999

240 pages, 7 b/w illus.
23.3 x 17.3 x 3.7 cm, 0.39 kg

'Clery's is one of the best books on the novel in the Romantic period which I have recently read. [Clery] provides splendidly selected and marshalled evidence in support of her thesis. But perhaps best of all, she situates her discussions within, and constantly refers to the power of, the novel-reading market-place of the Romantic period. This allows Clery, more successfully than any other critic I have read, to establish the institutional links between the providers and consumers of supernatural fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, authoritatively to present the cultural expectations of audiences concerning the Gothic novels and romances they read and thus to trace the emergence of something like the modern literary industry. This is the single most vitalizing and illuminating element in Clery's work, and permits her a perspective on her materials of which all later students will have to take account … She is entirely expert and au fait in her handling of both the historical and cultural, and the literary aspects of her study. Her writing is informed by theory but remains clean and lucid, and she has a talent for aphorism which she uses to great effect … To add to its many other charms, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 has fascinating and extensive notes and an excellent bibliography. Altogether, Clery's book is a landmark'. Romanticism

A genre of supernatural fiction was among the more improbable products of the Age of Enlightenment. This book charts the troubled entry of the supernatural into fiction, and questions the historical reasons for its growing popularity in the late eighteenth century. Beginning with the notorious case of the Cock Lane ghost, a performing poltergeist who became a major attraction in London in 1762, and with Garrick's spellbinding and paradigmatic performance as the ghost-seeing Hamlet, it moves on to look at the Gothic novels of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, and others, in unexpected new lights. The central thesis concerns the connection between fictions of the supernatural and the growth of consumerism: not only are ghost stories successful commodities in the rapidly commercialising book market, they are also considered here as reflections on the disruptive effects of this socio-economic transformation.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Techniques of Ghost-Seeing: 1. The case of the Cock Lane ghost
2. Producing enthusiastic terror
Part II. The Business of Romance: 3. The advantages of history
4. Back to the future
5. The value of the supernatural in a commercial society
Part III. The Strange Luxury of Artificial Terror: 6. Women, luxury and the sublime
7. The supernatural explained
8. Like a heroine
Part IV. Magico-Political Tales: 9. The terrorist system
10. Conspiracy, subversion, supernaturalism
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]