Terror and Wonder is the perfect title for the British Library’s current exhibition, a review of Gothic literature from its “official” origins in the eighteenth century to its present manifestation in thriller novels, suspenseful short stories, and stylistic comics and animations.
Tonight outside the Library, in the forum created in the middle of its pieces of modern architecture, stand two almost impossibly black horses, kept from twitching by a commanding henchman, similarly Gothic in a black top hat and tails. Against the evening spotlights of the forum, the horses, their drawn carriage, and their attendants stand as if in silhouette. They seem unreal.
The exhibition that follows celebrates this feeling I had looking upon the beautiful horses, that of the sublime, the awe-inspiring, unlikely, stunning and somehow threatening at once.
In the absence of an impressive costume, I wear black lipstick in honor and enter the exhibition…
Creepy beginnings
To thank for the gradual but unstoppable rise of Gothic literature is Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Ontranto, which he claims he largely took from an existing Italian work. This novel represents the outset of the Gothic tradition in literature, and Walpole famously declared the story as “Gothic” in its original title page, and introduces symbols and settings that will become synonymous with Gothic, like castles, abbeys, and other places with equal share of grandeur and ruin.
The importance of Frankenstein
In an exhibition like this that journeys through a phenomenon chronologically, any area that particularly stands out speaks of historical importance or particular influence. One of the main pillars of this Gothic chronology is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, definitely one of the most widely read of all the classics displayed here. Original letters and manuscripts show how significant the writing of Frankenstein was even at the time, and how the men that surrounded Mary, namely her future husband Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, were impressed that such sublimity could be conjured by a teenage girl.
Penny dreadfuls
Some of my favorite examples of Gothic fiction are the penny dreadfuls. Chapbook-esque stories, probably most famously published by Charles Dickens, the penny dreadfuls were cheaply bound and sold for a penny, often favouring dramatic, almost lurid Gothic murder stories and romances. Part of the wonderful service Gothic literature has done for readers and writers throughout history is to provide a world where melodrama can be uncontained and suspense is the currency. What a freeing place for authors to be able to dip into.
The style of modern Gothic
From the lithe illustrations of the Romantic poets, to the technicolor beauties of Gothic films in the 60’s and 70’s, to the present day, Gothic literature has always had an accompanying visual style. The Gothic sensibility of the present is perhaps more difficult to characterise right now; we’re so in amongst it. It is especially difficult to sum up because as our reading habits have strayed and diversified, Gothic has become about so much more than dark settings eerily described and damsels whose innocence is bitten and drained.
There is certainly a soft side to today’s Gothic. Writers like Neil Gaiman and Tim Burton have made their take on Gothic tales more of a visual one, giving them a particular shape and outline, a definitive style. But the substance that has always underpinned style in the Gothic tradition very much remains.
What becomes clear is that our taste and vigour for creating Gothic works has not diminished at all over hundreds of years.
Of course, tourist London makes the most of Halloween week. There are a number of events going on tonight in the cultural hubs of the city. You’d be hard pushed to find a major museum or library not creating special exhibits that celebrate the macabre. But, delightfully, a lot of these events have been open since the beginning of October and go on through the holiday season (you can catch Terror and Wonder at the British Library till January 20th 2015). It seems, as the days draw dark and short, we all like to celebrate our darker sides, All Hallows Eve or not.
Send us your creepy literature favorites, ghost stories, pictures, or anything that’ll give us a spook.
Images: Todd Quackenbush via Unsplash, and The British Library
