The only mainstream anthology to bring together the defining Gothic tales of the 1890s
Complements and deepens the context for the most enduring Gothic fiction of the period: Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Stoker's Dracula Mixes well-known authors with the more obscure and brings together stories usually only available in obscure editions or in single-author collections All texts derive from initial publication in the 1890s, rather than their subsequent, often revised, versions Notes provide short biographies of the authors and the introduction explains the diverse reasons for the Gothic revival
The Victorian fin de siècle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.