A literary history of Cornwall in the Victorian imagination.
What comes to mind when we think of Cornwall? Wild coastlines, golden beaches, sooty miners, and Cornish pasties, perhaps. In the nineteenth century, however, it was considered a frightening and threatening space. This book details the “discovery” of Cornwall in the popular imagination as the Victorians expanded the rail network and how Cornwall was seen as both a foreign nation on England’s doorstep and as a haunted place, full of ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and legends. Proposing a distinctly Cornish Gothic tradition, Joan Passey’s study offers major new readings of writers such as Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and introduces many Cornish writers to a broader readership.
By:
Joan Passey
Imprint: University of Wales Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
ISBN: 9781786839916
ISBN 10: 1786839911
Series: Gothic Literary Studies
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 03 August 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: No Longer Our Product
Introduction: Corpses, Coasts and Carriages Cornwall: A Brief Introduction The Cornish Gothic The Regional Gothic Cornish Gothic Criticism Part One - Landscapes and Legends: Preserving and Confronting the Past Chapter One: ‘The dead lay buried and yet unburied’: Minescapes and the Subterranean World The Subterranean Gothic Wheal Darkness by H. D. Lowry Chapter Two: ‘If there’s got to be wrecks, please send them to we’: Seascapes and Shipwrecks Shipwreck as Gothic Master Trope The Dead Secret and Wreck Media Bram Stoker and ‘The Coming of Abel Behenna’ Chapter Three: ‘Hear the most curious stories’: Folklore, Antiquarianism and Gothic Rewritings In the Roar of the Sea by Sabine Baring-Gould Part Two – Travel and Tourism: Cornish Identity and Encounters with Modernity Chapter Four: 'Out of the sound of the railway whistle': Gothic Travel and the Expansion of the Railway Victorian Gothic Travel Victorian Travel in Cornwall The Jewel of Seven Stars and Gothic Travel into Cornwall ‘Colonel Benyon’s Entanglement’ Chapter Five: ‘The poet gives all his votes to us’: King Arthur and Arthurian Tourism in Tintagel Nineteenth-Century Medievalism Arthur in Cornwall Case Studies Chapter Six: ‘A phantom to proclaim their hoary and solitary age’: Cornish Ghosts and Hauntings Visiting Haunted Cornwall Economic Spectres Haunted Shores Conclusion
Joan Passey is a lecturer of English at the University of Bristol.
Reviews for Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913
"""Passey's richly researched and highly engaging account of how Cornwall became Gothicised in nineteenth-century writing not only sheds new light on an under-researched corner of Victorian Gothic, but in doing so significantly expands our understanding of the part the region plays in the contemporary cultural imagination."" -- ""Catherine Spooner, professor of literature and culture, Lancaster University"" ""Cornish Gothic is a book that is long overdue. Placing beautiful Cornwall at the heart of the Gothic tradition - no longer a 'footnote', Cornwall is shown to be steeped in the Gothic with seams as deep as its mines. Presenting a wealth of new research with a freshness of approach, Joan Passey evidences Cornish Gothic as distinct and historically fascinating.""-- ""Dr Ruth Heholt, associate professor of dark economies and Gothic literature, Falmouth University"""
