"Articulately and elegantly written, the force of this groundbreaking book goes in two directions. It reflects powerfully on the role of utterances, voices, and sounds of all kinds in the Gothic; and it develops a strong argument about the centrality of vocal utterance to the development and establishment of American cultural self-conception." --David Punter, University of Bristol

David Punter, University of Bristol | University of Wales Press

"With its fascinating focus on ventriloquism and unintelligible speech, animal noises, and other types of sound, Jimmy Packham’s Gothic Utterance issues a clarion call to attend to the neglected roles of voice and sound in American Gothic and the Gothic more broadly. Researchers into the Gothic will want to listen carefully to what it has to say!" --Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan University 

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan University | University of Wales Press

"The Gothic is always telling people something they don’t want to hear: our consciences can’t be killed; past sins, our own or our ancestors’, will ultimately be revealed; and we’re generally not who we think we are. In Gothic Utterance: Voice, Speech, and Death in the American Gothic, Jimmy Packham demonstrates how frequently, in US fiction of the long nineteenth century, the Gothic literally speaks, through the voices of the dead, the undead, and the dying, as well as the traumatized, the outcast, the nonhuman, and the wilderness. . . . a fresh rereading of a wide swath of nineteenth-century American texts."

American Literary History