Readership and Historical Context

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the origins of the word ‘gothic’ itself, the original readership for the earliest gothic novels, and what is was about eighteenth-century England that gave rise to novels such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796)

About the lecturer

John McRae is Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies and Teaching Associate in the School of English at Nottingham University, and holds Visiting Professorships in China, Malaysia, Spain and the USA. He is co-author of The Routledge History of Literature in English with Ron Carter, and also wrote The Language of Poetry, Literature with a Small 'l' and the first critical edition of Teleny by Oscar Wilde and others.