Contesting the Gothic fiction, genre and cultural conflict, 1764-1832 - Watt, James (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 186-200) and index
Origins : Horace Walpole and The castle of Otranto -- Loyalist gothic romance -- Gothic 'subversion': German literature, the Minerva Press, Matthew Lewis -- First poetess of romantic fiction: Ann Radcliffe -- Field of romance: Walter Scott, the Waverley novels, the Gothic
Charting its vicissitudes from Walpole to Scott, James Watt shows the Gothic to have been a heterogeneous body of fiction, characterised at times by antagonistic relations between writers or works. He examines the novels' political import, and looks ahead to the fluctuating critical status of Scott and the Gothic