The texts in this unique collection range from the Gothic Revival of the late eighteenth century through to the late Victorian gothic, and from the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge to the short fiction of H.G. Wells and Henry James. Genres represented include medievalist poetry, psychological thrillers, dark political dystopias, sinister tales of social corruption, and popular ghost tales.

In addition to a wide selection of classic and lesser-known texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Gothic Evolutions includes key examples of the aesthetic, scientific, and cultural theory related to the Gothic, from John Locke and David Hume to Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva.

Corinna Wagner's profile page

Corinna Wagner is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Exeter, UK.

“Corinna Wagner’s capacious anthology brings together, like no other competing volume, a fresh and truly invigorating selection of Gothic tales, poetry, short stories, fragments, and dramas. Across its exciting range of primary texts, the anthology attests to the richness, diversity, longevity, and adaptability of the Gothic mode. Each of the collection’s featured writers is carefully introduced, glossed, and contextualized, while the anthology as a whole is supported by a rigorous and scholarly editorial framework, including a thematic guide, a detailed chronology, illustrations, suggestions for further reading, and several invaluable appendices of relevant historical and theoretical material. Wagner’s anthology contributes powerfully to existing scholarly debates while also providing an accessible introduction to Gothic studies. As important a resource for the student as for the established researcher, Gothic Evolutions is set to become a benchmark volume in the field.” — Dale Townshend, University of Stirling

“Corinna Wagner’s wonderfully rich compendium of poems and tales could easily serve as the single textbook for a survey of the Gothic. Familiar poems and tales are freshly contextualized, both historically and thematically, and the collection also includes a number of unexpected pleasures from lesser-known authors. The appendices provide generous excerpts from the later-modern political philosophy, aesthetic theory, and social medicine that influenced the Gothic, as well as more recent theoretical approaches to the genre. Wagner’s lucid introduction examines the origins of Gothic literature in medievalism and faux-medievalism, and tracks its evolving but always ambivalent relationship to its own times. Gothic Evolutions is an exciting new resource for teachers and scholars of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic, and indeed for all who love the genre.” — Kelly Hurley, University of Colorado at Boulder