103-552: Rodney Stone is a Gothic mystery and boxing novel by Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first published in 1896. The eponymous narrator is a Sussex country boy who is the son of a sailor and wishes to go to sea himself. He is taken to London by his uncle Sir Charles Tregellis, a highly respected gentleman and arbiter of fashion who is on familiar terms with the most important people of Great Britain. The novel interweaves Rodney's coming-of-age story with that of his friend Boy Jim's boxing endeavours. Jim has been brought up by
206-414: A blacksmith whom he believes to be his uncle - the blacksmith Harrison was a famous former boxer and the 'nephew' wishes to fight too. A large portion of it deals with the famous bare-knuckle boxers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as Jem Belcher , John Jackson , Daniel Mendoza , Dutch Sam , and others. The book includes vignettes of a number of historical personages, notably
309-598: A counter to the naive and persecuted heroines usually featured in female Gothic of the time, and instead feature more sexually assertive heroines in their works. When the female Gothic coincides with the explained supernatural , the natural cause of terror is not the supernatural, but female disability and societal horrors: rape , incest , and the threatening control of a male antagonist. Female Gothic novels also address women's discontent with patriarchal society, their difficult and unsatisfying maternal position, and their role within that society. Women's fears of entrapment in
412-561: A document admitting the possibility of there having been a mere coincidence. I would be compensated with a quantity described as 'of considerable value.' I did not consent, naturally. Rohter remarked: "Nabuco had translated her novel into French and sent it to a publisher in Paris, who she learned was also Ms. du Maurier's [publisher] only after Rebecca became a worldwide success. The novels have identical plots and even some identical episodes." Author Frank Baker 's second novel, The Birds ,
515-555: A female named Catherine, conceives herself as a heroine of a Radcliffean romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side. However, the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. This novel is also noted for including a list of early Gothic works known as the Northanger Horrid Novels . The poetry, romantic adventures, and character of Lord Byron —characterized by his spurned lover Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know"—were another inspiration for
618-540: A female vampire, is notable for its treatment of vampirism as both racial and medicalized. The vampire, Harriet Brandt, is also a psychic vampire , killing unintentionally. In the United States, notable late 19th-century writers in the Gothic tradition were Ambrose Bierce , Robert W. Chambers , and Edith Wharton . Bierce's short stories were in the horrific and pessimistic tradition of Poe. Chambers indulged in
721-490: A ghostly nun, and its view of Roman Catholicism as exotic and heathenistic. Nathaniel Hawthorne 's novel The House of the Seven Gables , about a family's ancestral home, is colored with suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft ; and in true Gothic fashion, it features the house itself as one of the main characters, The genre also heavily influenced writers such as Charles Dickens , who read Gothic novels as
824-450: A great day for the older grandchildren. So she went through with it, though she slipped out quietly afterwards to avoid the attention of the press." The Daphne du Maurier Companion , edited by Helen Taylor, includes Taylor's claims that du Maurier confessed to her in 1965 that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father and that he had been a violent alcoholic. Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that because her father had wanted
927-850: A long-running hit, completing 617 performances. It was revived by Caroline Smith at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames on 5 September 2007, starring Karen Ascoe and Mark Tandy . Her third play, September Tide , portrays a middle-aged woman whose bohemian artist son-in-law falls in love with her. Again directed by Irene Hentschel, it opened at the Aldwych Theatre on 15 December 1948 with Gertrude Lawrence as Stella. It closed in August 1949 after 267 performances. Two authors accused Du Maurier of plagiarism, but were unable to prove their claims. Shortly after Rebecca
1030-462: A number of stories that fall within the Gothic genre or contain Gothic elements. They include " Saint John's Eve " and " A Terrible Vengeance " from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–1832), " The Portrait " from Arabesques (1835), and " Viy " from Mirgorod (1835). While all are well known, the latter is probably the most famous, having inspired at least eight film adaptations (two now considered lost), one animated film, two documentaries, and
1133-465: A persecuted heroine fleeing from a villainous father and searching for an absent mother. At the same time, male writers tend towards the masculine transgression of social taboos . The emergence of the ghost story gave women writers something to write about besides the common marriage plot, allowing them to present a more radical critique of male power, violence, and predatory sexuality. Authors such as Mary Robinson and Charlotte Dacre however, present
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#17327939862461236-554: A production by George Devine , starring Celia Johnson and Owen Nares as the De Winters and Margaret Rutherford as Mrs. Danvers. After 181 performances, the production transferred to the Strand Theatre , with Jill Furse taking over as the second Mrs. De Winter and Mary Merrall as Mrs. Danvers, with a further run of 176 performances. In 1943 she wrote the autobiographically inspired drama The Years Between about
1339-499: A rational age. Initiating a literary genre, Walpole's Gothic tale inspired many contemporary imitators, including Clara Reeve 's The Old English Baron (1778), with Reeve writing in the preface: "This Story is the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto ". Like Reeve, the 1780s saw more writers attempting his combination of supernatural plots with emotionally realistic characters. Examples include Sophia Lee 's The Recess (1783–5) and William Beckford 's Vathek (1786). At
1442-439: A son, she became a tomboy , in an attempt to get the parental approval she would have had she been born a boy. In correspondence that her family released to biographer Margaret Forster, du Maurier explained to a trusted few people that she felt her personality comprised two distinct people – the loving wife and mother side she showed to the world, and the lover side, a "decidedly male energy", hidden from virtually everyone, which
1545-421: A story in a Gothic building serves several purposes. It inspires feelings of awe, implies that the story is set in the past, gives an impression of isolation or dissociation from the rest of the world, and conveys religious associations. Setting the novel in a Gothic castle was meant to imply a story set in the past and shrouded in darkness. The architecture often served as a mirror for the characters and events of
1648-473: A teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his works, shifting them to a more modern period and an urban setting; for example, in Oliver Twist (1837–1838), Bleak House (1854) and Great Expectations (1860–1861). These works juxtapose wealthy, ordered, and affluent civilization with the disorder and barbarity of the poor in the same metropolis. Bleak House, in particular,
1751-452: A treatment of the short story of that name, as is the film Don't Look Now (1973). Of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Hitchcock's Rebecca and Nicolas Roeg 's Don't Look Now . Hitchcock's treatment of Jamaica Inn was disavowed by both director and author, due to a complete re-write of the ending to accommodate the ego of its star, Charles Laughton . Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland
1854-501: A video game. Gogol's work differs from Western European Gothic fiction, as his cultural influences drew on Ukrainian folklore , the Cossack lifestyle, and, as a religious man, Orthodox Christianity . Other relevant authors of this era include Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky ( The Living Corpse , written 1838, published 1844, The Ghost , The Sylphide , as well as short stories), Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy ( The Family of
1957-654: A warm and immensely funny person in private who was a welcoming hostess to guests at Menabilly , the house that she had leased for many years, from the Rashleigh family in Cornwall. Her husband died in 1965 and soon afterward Daphne moved to Kilmarth , near Par, Cornwall , which became the setting for The House on the Strand , and where she became an early member of Mebyon Kernow , a Cornish nationalist party. An exception to her reticence to give interviews came after
2060-483: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Gothic fiction 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
2163-475: Is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. 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. Characteristic settings in the 18th and 19th centuries include castles, religious buildings such as monasteries and convents , and crypts . The atmosphere
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#17327939862462266-514: Is credited with introducing urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film. Miss Havisham from Great Expectations , is one of Dickens' most Gothic characters. The bitter recluse shuts herself away in her gloomy mansion ever since being jilted at the altar on her wedding day. His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood , which he did not live to complete and
2369-453: Is immediately in front of us." The mysterious imagination necessary for Gothic literature to have gained any traction had been growing for some time before the advent of the Gothic. The need for this came as the known world was becoming more explored, reducing the geographical mysteries of the world. The edges of the map were filling in, and no dragons were to be found. The human mind required a replacement. Clive Bloom theorizes that this void in
2472-603: Is inducing Terror – or else "a great deal of the apprehension vanishes"; Obscurity is necessary to experience the Terror of the unknown. Bloom asserts that Burke's descriptive vocabulary was essential to the Romantic works that eventually informed the Gothic. The birth of Gothic literature was thought to have been influenced by political upheaval. Researchers linked its birth with the English Civil War , culminating in
2575-475: Is often described with words such as "wonder" and "terror." This sense of wonder and terror that provides the suspension of disbelief so important to the Gothic—which, except for when it is parodied, even for all its occasional melodrama , is typically played straight, in a self-serious manner—requires the imagination of the reader to be willing to accept the idea that there might be something "beyond that which
2678-426: Is particularly important, as his 1833 short story The Queen of Spades was so popular that it was adapted into operas and later films by Russian and foreign artists. Some parts of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (1840) are also considered to belong to the Gothic genre, but they lack the supernatural elements of other Russian Gothic stories. The following poems are also now considered to belong to
2781-557: Is set in the twenty-second century and speculates on fantastic scientific developments that might have occurred three hundred years in the future, making it and Frankenstein among the earliest examples of the science fiction genre developing from Gothic traditions. During two decades, the most famous author of Gothic literature in Germany was the polymath E. T. A. Hoffmann . Lewis's The Monk influenced and even mentioned it in his novel The Devil's Elixirs (1815). The novel explores
2884-596: Is strongly associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, marked by harsh laws enforced by torture and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals . Similar to the Gothic Revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the Neoclassical style of
2987-501: Is typically claustrophobic , and common plot elements include vengeful persecution, imprisonment, and murder. The depiction of horrible events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts. The form of a Gothic story is usually discontinuous and convoluted, often incorporating tales within tales, changing narrators, and framing devices such as discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories. Other characteristics, regardless of relevance to
3090-536: The Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime , and a quest for atmosphere. Gothic ruins invoke multiple linked emotions by representing inevitable decay and the collapse of human creations – hence the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. Placing
3193-473: The French Revolution . The du Mauriers traces the family's move from France to England in the 19th century. The House on the Strand (1969) combines elements of "mental time-travel", a tragic love affair in 14th-century Cornwall, and the dangers of using mind-altering drugs. Her final book, Rule Britannia (1972), was not well-received, her biographer, Margaret Forster, considering it to be
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3296-572: The Graveyard poets . They were also present in novels such as Daniel Defoe 's A Journal of the Plague Year , which contains comical scenes of plague carts and piles of corpses. Even earlier, poets like Edmund Spenser evoked a dreary and sorrowful mood in such poems as Epithalamion . All aspects of pre-Gothic literature occur to some degree in the Gothic, but even taken together, they still fall short of true Gothic. What needed to be added
3399-522: The Jacobite rising of 1745 which was more recent to the first Gothic novel (1764). The collective political memory and any deep cultural fears associated with it likely contributed to early Gothic villains as literary representatives of defeated Tory barons or Royalists "rising" from their political graves in the pages of early Gothic novels to terrorize the bourgeois reader of late eighteenth-century England. The first work to call itself "Gothic"
3502-627: The Prince Regent , Lord Nelson , Sir John Lade , Lord Cochrane and Beau Brummell . There are also descriptions of thuggery , of gambling and cheating, and of dangerous horse-drawn chases. It was adapted into a 1913 silent film, The House of Temperley , directed by Harold M. Shaw . The novel was dramatised as a four-part serial on BBC Radio 4 in 1983, which was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in March 2020 and June 2022. Available online via BBC Sounds. This article about an 1890s novel
3605-581: The trope of vampires having sharpened teeth. Another notable English author of penny dreadfuls is George W. M. Reynolds , known for The Mysteries of London (1844), Faust (1846), Wagner the Wehr-wolf (1847), and The Necromancer (1857). Elizabeth Gaskell 's tales "The Doom of the Griffiths" (1858), "Lois the Witch", and "The Grey Woman" all employ one of the most common themes of Gothic fiction:
3708-416: The 1790s." The popularity and influence of The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk saw the rise of shorter and cheaper versions of Gothic literature in the forms of Gothic bluebooks and chapbooks , which in many cases were plagiarized and abridgments of well known Gothic novels. The Monk in particular, with its immoral and sensational content, saw many plagiarized copies, and was notably drawn from in
3811-491: The 2007 BBC Two film, Daphne . The children of both du Maurier and Lawrence have objected strongly to the stories about the alleged relationship between their mothers. Two years after Lawrence died, a biography of her written by her widower, Richard Aldrich, went into detail about a friendship between her and du Maurier that had begun in 1948 when Lawrence had accepted the lead role in du Maurier's new play September Tide . Aldrich said that Lawrence had toured Britain in
3914-594: The German Schauerroman and the French R oman noir . Eighteenth-century Gothic novels were typically set in a distant past and (for English novels) a distant European country, but without specific dates or historical figures that characterized the later development of historical fiction. The saturation of Gothic-inspired literature during the 1790s was referred to in a letter by Samuel Taylor Coleridge , writing on 16 March 1797, "indeed I am almost weary of
4017-490: The Gothic and influenced Bram Stoker 's vampire novel Dracula (1897). Stoker's book created the most famous Gothic villain ever, Count Dracula , and established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the locus classicus of the Gothic. Published in the same year as Dracula , Florence Marryat 's The Blood of the Vampire is another piece of vampire fiction. The Blood of the Vampire , which, like Carmilla, features
4120-444: The Gothic genre made it rich territory for satire. Historian Rictor Norton notes that satire of Gothic literature was common from 1796 until the 1820s, including early satirical works such as The New Monk (1798), More Ghosts ! (1798) and Rosella, or Modern Occurrences (1799). Gothic novels themselves, according to Norton, also possess elements of self-satire, "By having profane comic characters as well as sacred serious characters,
4223-426: The Gothic genre: Meshchevskiy's "Lila", Katenin's "Olga", Pushkin 's "The Bridegroom", Pletnev 's "The Gravedigger" and Lermontov 's Demon (1829–1839). The key author of the transition from Romanticism to Realism, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol , who was also one of the most important authors of Romanticism, produced a number of works that qualify as Gothic fiction. Each of his three short story collections features
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4326-583: The Gothic novel, providing the archetype of the Byronic hero . For example, Byron is the title character in Lady Caroline's Gothic novel Glenarvon (1816). Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley , Mary Shelley , and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati on the banks of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. This occasion
4429-407: The Gothic novelist could puncture the balloon of the supernatural while at the same time affirming the power of the imagination." After 1800 there was a period in which Gothic parodies outnumbered forthcoming Gothic novels. In The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett (1813), Gothic tropes are exaggerated for comic effect. In Jane Austen 's novel Northanger Abbey (1818), the naive protagonist,
4532-462: The Gothic tradition, Mary Shelley's novel is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the novel's lack of any scientific explanation for the animation of Frankenstein's monster and the focus instead on the moral dilemmas and consequences of such a creation. John Keats ' La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) and Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1820) feature mysteriously fey ladies. In
4635-403: The Gothic. Emily Brontë 's Wuthering Heights (1847) transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff. The Brontës' fictions were cited by feminist critic Ellen Moers as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and
4738-664: The Screw (1898), and the stories of Arthur Machen . In Ireland, Gothic fiction tended to be purveyed by the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy . According to literary critic Terry Eagleton , Charles Maturin , Sheridan Le Fanu , and Bram Stoker form the core of the Irish Gothic subgenre with stories featuring castles set in a barren landscape and a cast of remote aristocrats dominating an atavistic peasantry, which represent an allegorical form
4841-574: The Strand , and The King's General . The last is set in Cornwall during the English Civil War , and is written from the Royalist perspective. Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored, given that her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal. In this light, she has more in common with the " sensation novels " of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired. The critic Kate Kellaway wrote: "Du Maurier
4944-513: The Sublime and Beautiful , which "finally codif[ied] the gothic emotional experience." Specifically, Burke's thoughts on the Sublime, Terror, and Obscurity were most applicable. These sections can be summarized thus: the Sublime is that which is or produces the "strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling"; Terror most often evoked the Sublime; and to cause Terror, we need some amount of Obscurity – we can't know everything about that which
5047-758: The Terrible, having been a hireling in the Critical Review for the last six or eight months – I have been reviewing the Monk , the Italian , Hubert de Sevrac &c &c &c – in all of which dungeons, and old castles, & solitary Houses by the Sea Side & Caverns & Woods & extraordinary characters & all the tribe of Horror & Mystery, have crowded on me – even to surfeiting." The excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of
5150-668: The Vourdalak , 1839, and The Vampire , 1841), Mikhail Zagoskin ( Unexpected Guests ), Józef Sękowski / Osip Senkovsky ( Antar ), and Yevgeny Baratynsky ( The Ring ). By the Victorian era , Gothic had ceased to be the dominant genre for novels in England, partly replaced by more sedate historical fiction . However, Gothic short stories continued to be popular, published in magazines or as small chapbooks called penny dreadfuls . The most influential Gothic writer from this period
5253-461: The author's poorest novel. Rebecca has been adapted for both stage and screen several times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in his 1940 film Rebecca . Several of du Maurier's other novels have also been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn , Frenchman's Creek , Hungry Hill , and My Cousin Rachel in both 1952 and 2017 . The Hitchcock film The Birds (1963) is based on
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#17327939862465356-513: The cheaper pamphlets. Other notable Gothic novels of the 1790s include William Godwin 's Caleb Williams (1794), Regina Maria Roche 's Clermont (1798), and Charles Brockden Brown 's Wieland (1798), as well as large numbers of anonymous works published by the Minerva Press established by William Lane at Leadenhall Street , London in 1790. In continental Europe, Romantic literary movements led to related Gothic genres such as
5459-429: The collective imagination was critical in developing the cultural possibility for the rise of the Gothic tradition. The setting of most early Gothic works was medieval, but this was a common theme long before Walpole. In Britain especially, there was a desire to reclaim a shared past. This obsession frequently led to extravagant architectural displays, such as Fonthill Abbey , and sometimes mock tournaments were held. It
5562-512: The day Would quake to look on. — Lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet The components that would eventually combine into Gothic literature had a rich history by the time Walpole presented a fictitious medieval manuscript in The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The plays of William Shakespeare , in particular, were a crucial reference point for early Gothic writers, in both an effort to bring credibility to their works, and to legitimize
5665-622: The decadent style of Wilde and Machen, even including a character named Wilde in his The King in Yellow (1895). Wharton published some notable Gothic ghost stories. Some works of the Canadian writer Gilbert Parker also fall into the genre, including the stories in The Lane that had No Turning (1900). Daphne du Maurier Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning , DBE ( / d uː ˈ m ɒr i eɪ / ; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989)
5768-587: The domestic, their bodies, marriage, childbirth, or domestic abuse commonly appear in the genre. After the characteristic Gothic Bildungsroman -like plot sequence, female Gothic allowed readers to grow from "adolescence to maturity" in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As protagonists such as Adeline in The Romance of the Forest learn that their superstitious fantasies and terrors are replaced by natural cause and reasonable doubt,
5871-470: The emerging genre as serious literature to the public. Tragedies such as Hamlet , Macbeth , King Lear , Romeo and Juliet , and Richard III , with plots revolving around the supernatural, revenge, murder, ghosts, witchcraft , and omens , written in dramatic pathos, and set in medieval castles, were a huge influence upon early Gothic authors, who frequently quote, and make allusions to Shakespeare's works. John Milton 's Paradise Lost (1667)
5974-482: The female Gothic allowed women's societal and sexual desires to be introduced. In many respects, the novel's intended reader of the time was the woman who, even as she enjoyed such novels, felt she had to "[lay] down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame," according to Jane Austen . The Gothic novel shaped its form for woman readers to "turn to Gothic romances to find support for their own mixed feelings." Female Gothic narratives focus on such topics as
6077-401: The height of the Gothic novel's popularity in the 1790s, the genre was almost synonymous with Ann Radcliffe , whose works were highly anticipated and widely imitated. The Romance of the Forest (1791) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) were particularly popular. In an essay on Radcliffe, Walter Scott writes of the popularity of Udolpho at the time, "The very name was fascinating, and
6180-446: The latter poem, the names of the characters, the dream visions, and the macabre physical details are influenced by the novels of premiere Gothicist Ann Radcliffe. Although ushering in the historical novel, and turning popularity away from Gothic fiction, Walter Scott frequently employed Gothic elements in his novels and poetry. Scott drew upon oral folklore , fireside tales, and ancient superstitions, often juxtaposing rationality and
6283-493: The main plot, can include sleeplike and deathlike states, live burials , doubles , unnatural echoes or silences, the discovery of obscured family ties, unintelligible writings, nocturnal landscapes, remote locations, and dreams. Especially in the late 19th century, Gothic fiction often involved demons and demonic possession , ghosts , and other kinds of evil spirits . Gothic fiction often moves between " high culture " and " low " or " popular culture ". Gothic literature
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#17327939862466386-553: The most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Du Maurier spent her childhood at Cannon Hall, Hampstead , the family's London residence, and summers at their home in Fowey , Cornwall, where they also lived during the war years. Du Maurier married Major (later Lieutenant-General ) Frederick "Boy" Browning in 1932. They had three children: She was known as Daphne du Maurier from 1907 to 1932, when she married Frederick Browning. Still writing as Daphne du Maurier during her marriage, she
6489-637: The most celebrated Realists, wrote Faust (1856), Phantoms (1864), Song of the Triumphant Love (1881), and Clara Milich (1883). Another classic Russian Realist, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky , incorporated Gothic elements into many of his works, although none can be seen as purely Gothic. Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky , who wrote historical and early science fiction novels and stories, wrote Mertvec-ubiytsa ( Dead Murderer ) in 1879. Also, Grigori Alexandrovich Machtet wrote "Zaklyatiy kazak", which may now also be considered Gothic. The 1880s saw
6592-704: The motive of Doppelgänger , a term coined by another German author and supporter of Hoffmann, Jean-Paul , in his humorous novel Siebenkäs (1796–1797). He also wrote an opera based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué 's Gothic story Undine (1816), for which de la Motte Fouqué wrote the libretto. Aside from Hoffmann and de la Motte Fouqué, three other important authors from the era were Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff ( The Marble Statue , 1818), Ludwig Achim von Arnim ( Die Majoratsherren , 1819), and Adelbert von Chamisso ( Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte , 1814). After them, Wilhelm Meinhold wrote The Amber Witch (1838) and Sidonia von Bork (1847). In Spain,
6695-556: The novels Rebecca , Frenchman's Creek , My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn , and the short stories " The Birds " and " Don't Look Now ". Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall , where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive. Daphne du Maurier was born at 24 Cumberland Terrace , Regent's Park , London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont . Her paternal grandfather
6798-501: The play in 1948 and continued with it in London's West End theatre district through 1949, and that later du Maurier visited them at their home in the United States. Aldrich made no mention of a possible same-sex relationship . Du Maurier died from heart failure in her sleep on 19 April 1989, aged 81, at her home in Par, Cornwall, which had been the setting for many of her books. Her body
6901-566: The political plight of Catholic Ireland subjected to the Protestant Ascendancy. Le Fanu's use of the gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine in Uncle Silas (1864) shows direct influence from Walpole's Otranto and Radcliffe's Udolpho . Le Fanu's short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872) includes the superlative vampire tale Carmilla , which provided fresh blood for that particular strand of
7004-495: The power of ancestral sins to curse future generations, or the fear that they will. M. R. James , an English medievalist whose stories are still popular today, is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story." In Spain, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer stood out with his romantic poems and short tales, some depicting supernatural events. Today some consider him the most-read Spanish writer after Miguel de Cervantes . In addition to these short Gothic fictions, some novels drew on
7107-672: The priest Pascual Pérez Rodríguez was the most diligent novelist in the Gothic way, closely aligned to the supernatural explained by Ann Radcliffe. At the same time, the poet José de Espronceda published The Student of Salamanca (1837–1840), a narrative poem that presents a horrid variation on the Don Juan legend. In Russia, authors of the Romantic era include Antony Pogorelsky (penname of Alexey Alexeyevich Perovsky), Orest Somov , Oleksa Storozhenko , Alexandr Pushkin , Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy , Mikhail Lermontov (for his work Stuss ), and Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky . Pushkin
7210-518: The public, who rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, rose from it with unsated appetite. When a family was numerous, the volumes flew, and were sometimes torn from hand to hand." Radcliffe's novels were often seen as the feminine and rational opposite of a more violently horrifying male Gothic associated with Matthew Lewis . Radcliffe's final novel, The Italian (1797), responded to Lewis's The Monk (1796). Radcliffe and Lewis have been called "the two most significant Gothic novelists of
7313-638: The questionable criteria of popular fiction, and yet satisfied too the exacting requirements of 'real literature'." The discovery, in 2011, of a collection of du Maurier's forgotten short stories, written when the author was 21, provides some insight into her mature style. One of them, "The Doll", concerns a young woman's obsession with a mechanical male sex doll; it has been deemed by du Maurier's son Kit Browning to be "quite ahead of its time". She also wrote non-fiction, including several biographies such as Gerald , her father's biography. The Glass-Blowers traces her French Huguenot ancestry and vividly depicts
7416-461: The reader may grasp the heroine's true position: "The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition, the disability of being female." 'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as
7519-499: The release of the film A Bridge Too Far , based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, in which her late husband was portrayed in a less-than-flattering light. Incensed, she wrote to the national newspapers, decrying what she considered unforgivable treatment. She appeared as a castaway in the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs broadcast on 3 September 1977. Her chosen book was The Collected Works of Jane Austen , and her luxury
7622-485: The revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to fin de siecle , which fictionalized contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this Urban Gothic include Robert Louis Stevenson 's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde 's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), George du Maurier 's Trilby (1894), Richard Marsh 's The Beetle (1897), Henry James ' The Turn of
7725-468: The story. The buildings in The Castle of Otranto , for example, are riddled with tunnels that characters use to move back and forth in secret. This movement mirrors the secrets surrounding Manfred's possession of the castle and how it came into his family. From the castles, dungeons , forests, and hidden passages of the Gothic novel genre emerged female Gothic. Guided by the works of authors such as Ann Radcliffe , Mary Shelley , and Charlotte Brontë ,
7828-649: The supernatural. Novels such as The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), in which the characters' fates are decided by superstition and prophecy , or the poem Marmion (1808), in which a nun is walled alive inside a convent, illustrate Scott's influence and use of Gothic themes. A late example of a traditional Gothic novel is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin , which combines themes of anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero. Jane C. Loudon 's The Mummy! (1827) features standard Gothic motifs, characters, and plot, but with one significant twist; it
7931-459: The transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Emily Brontë's Cathy and Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre are examples of female protagonists in such roles. Louisa May Alcott 's Gothic potboiler, A Long Fatal Love Chase (written in 1866 but published in 1995), is also an interesting specimen of this subgenre. Charlotte Brontë's Villette also shows the Gothic influence, with its supernatural subplot featuring
8034-517: The unexpected return of a senior officer, thought killed in action, who finds that his wife has taken his seat as Member of Parliament (MP) and has started a romantic relationship with a local farmer. It was first staged at the Manchester Opera House in 1944 and then transferred to London, opening at Wyndham's Theatre on 10 January 1945, starring Nora Swinburne and Clive Brook . The production, directed by Irene Hentschel, became
8137-583: The use of gothic aesthetic in novels by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters , as well as works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne . Later well-known works were Dracula by Bram Stoker , Richard Marsh's The Beetle and Robert Louis Stevenson 's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . 20th-century contributors include Daphne du Maurier , Stephen King , Shirley Jackson , Anne Rice , and Toni Morrison . Gothic fiction
8240-412: Was Horace Walpole 's The Castle of Otranto (1764). The first edition presented the story as a translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript and was widely popular. Walpole, in the second edition, revealed himself as the author which adding the subtitle "A Gothic Story." The revelation prompted a backlash from readers, who considered it inappropriate for a modern author to write a supernatural story in
8343-465: Was a cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys , who were J. M. Barrie 's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up . She was also a cousin of director Gabrielle Beaumont . As a child, du Maurier met many prominent theatre actors, because of the celebrity of her father. On meeting Tallulah Bankhead , du Maurier was quoted as saying that Bankhead was
8446-612: Was a notable Gothic writer, and converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism. In Switzerland, Jeremias Gotthelf wrote The Black Spider (1842), an allegorical work that uses Gothic themes. The last work from the German writer Theodor Storm , The Rider on the White Horse (1888), also uses Gothic motives and themes. After Gogol, Russian literature saw the rise of Realism, but many authors continued to write stories within Gothic fiction territory. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev , one of
8549-407: Was also known as Lady Browning after her husband was knighted in 1946. Biographers have claimed that du Maurier's marriage was at times somewhat chilly, and that she could be aloof and distant to her children, especially the girls, when immersed in her writing. She has often been painted as a frostily private recluse who rarely mixed in society or gave interviews, but many people remembered her as
8652-422: Was also very influential among Gothic writers, who were especially drawn to the tragic anti-hero character Satan , who became a model for many charismatic Gothic villains and Byronic heroes . Milton's "version of the myth of the fall and redemption, creation and decreation, is, as Frankenstein again reveals, an important model for Gothic plots." Alexander Pope , who had a considerable influence on Walpole,
8755-560: Was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont . Her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist . Although du Maurier is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal . Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but they have since earned an enduring reputation for narrative craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including
8858-461: Was an aesthetic to tie the elements together. Bloom notes that this aesthetic must take the form of a theoretical or philosophical core, which is necessary to "sav[e] the best tales from becoming mere anecdote or incoherent sensationalism." In this case, the aesthetic needed to be emotional, and was finally provided by Edmund Burke 's 1757 work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of
8961-413: Was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier , who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby . Her paternal uncle Guy du Maurier was a playwright. Her mother was a paternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer Comyns Beaumont . Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier , became an actress and later also a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne du Maurier was a painter. She
9064-701: Was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels. The first work to call itself Gothic was Horace Walpole 's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto , later subtitled "A Gothic Story". Subsequent 18th-century contributors included Clara Reeve , Ann Radcliffe , William Thomas Beckford , and Matthew Lewis . The Gothic influence continued into the early 19th century; works by the Romantic poets , like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron , and novelists such as Mary Shelley , Charles Maturin , Walter Scott and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon gothic motifs in their works. The early Victorian period continued
9167-417: Was cremated in private and without a memorial service (at her request) and her ashes scattered off the cliffs around Kilmarth and Menabilly, Cornwall. Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in her great uncle Comyns Beaumont's Bystander magazine. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit , was published in 1931. The novel Rebecca (1938)
9270-828: Was du Maurier's most successful work. It was an immediate hit, selling nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965. The novel has never gone out of print. In the United States, du Maurier won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association . In the UK, it was listed at number 14 of the "nation's best-loved novel"s on the BBC 's 2003 survey The Big Read . Other significant works include Jamaica Inn , Frenchman's Creek , Hungry Hill , My Cousin Rachel , The Scapegoat , The House on
9373-630: Was examined in a 2002 article by Larry Rohter in The New York Times . According to Nabuco's memoirs, when the Hitchcock film Rebecca was first shown in Brazil, United Artists wanted Nabuco to sign a document stating that the similarities were merely a coincidence but she refused. Rohter quotes Nabuco's memoirs as saying, When the film version of 'Rebecca' came to Brazil, the producers' lawyer sought out my lawyer to ask him that I sign
9476-445: Was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers' minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings." Du Maurier's novel Mary Anne (1954) is a fictionalised account of her great-great-grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke née Thompson (1776–1852), who, from 1803 to 1808, was mistress of Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827). He
9579-555: Was not merely in literature that a medieval revival made itself felt, and this, too, contributed to a culture ready to accept a perceived medieval work in 1764. The Gothic often uses scenery of decay, death, and morbidity to achieve its effects (especially in the Italian Horror school of Gothic). However, Gothic literature was not the origin of this tradition; it was far older. The corpses, skeletons, and churchyards so commonly associated with early Gothic works were popularized by
9682-527: Was productive of both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Polidori's short story " The Vampyre " (1819), featuring the Byronic Lord Ruthven . "The Vampyre" has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction and theatre (and, latterly, film) that has not ceased to this day. Although clearly influenced by
9785-410: Was published by Peter Davies in 1936. Baker stated that it bore some resemblance to The Terror by Arthur Machen (first published 1917). When Alfred Hitchcock 's The Birds was released in 1963, based on " The Birds " (1952) by du Maurier, Baker considered litigation against Universal Studios but his legal counsel stated: "The treatment of the general idea of attacks by birds in the two works
9888-532: Was published in Brazil , critic Álvaro Lins and other readers pointed out many resemblances to the 1934 book, A Sucessora ( The Successor ) , by Brazilian writer Carolina Nabuco . According to Nabuco and her editor, not only the main plot, but also situations and entire dialogues had been copied. Du Maurier denied having copied Nabuco's book, as did her publisher, pointing out that the plot elements said to have been plagiarised were quite common. The controversy
9991-578: Was published unfinished upon his death in 1870. The mood and themes of the Gothic novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their obsession with mourning rituals, mementos , and mortality in general. Irish Catholics also wrote Gothic fiction in the 19th century. Although some Anglo-Irish dominated and defined the subgenre decades later, they did not own it. Irish Catholic Gothic writers included Gerald Griffin , James Clarence Mangan , and John and Michael Banim . William Carleton
10094-561: Was the " Grand Old Duke of York " of the nursery rhyme, a son of King George III , and brother of King George IV and King William IV . The central character of her last novel, Rule Britannia , is an aging actress, thought to be based on Gladys Cooper (to whom it is dedicated). Du Maurier's short stories are darker: " The Birds ", " Don't Look Now ", "The Apple Tree", and "The Blue Lenses" are finely crafted tales of terror that shocked and surprised her audience in equal measure. As her biographer Margaret Forster wrote, "She satisfied all
10197-624: Was the American Edgar Allan Poe , who wrote numerous short stories and poems reinterpreting Gothic tropes. His story " The Fall of the House of Usher " (1839) revisits classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and insanity . Poe is now considered the master of the American Gothic. In England, one of the most influential penny dreadfuls is the anonymously authored Varney the Vampire (1847), which introduced
10300-463: Was the first significant poet of the 18th century to write a poem in an authentic Gothic manner. Eloisa to Abelard (1717), a tale of star-crossed lovers, one doomed to a life of seclusion in a convent, and the other in a monastery, abounds in gloomy imagery, religious terror, and suppressed passion. The influence of Pope's poem is found throughout 18th-century Gothic literature, including the novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis. Gothic literature
10403-406: Was the power behind her artistic creativity. According to Forster's biography, du Maurier believed the "male energy" propelled her writing. After du Maurier's death in 1989, some writers speculated about her alleged intimate physical relationships with a number of women, including Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her U.S. publisher Nelson Doubleday , and the actress Gertrude Lawrence , as detailed in
10506-558: Was whisky and ginger ale. When she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, she was titled Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE, but she never used the title. According to her biographer Margaret Forster , she told no one about the honour, so that even her children learned of it only from the newspapers. "She thought of pleading illness for the investiture, until her children insisted it would be
10609-487: Was wrongly cast as the anti-heroine of My Cousin Rachel (1952) . Frenchman's Creek fared better in a lavish Technicolor version released in 1944 . Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat , which she partly financed. Du Maurier wrote three plays. Her first was an adaptation of her novel Rebecca , which opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 5 March 1940 in
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