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Distributed for University of Wales Press

Industrial Gothic

Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature

Distributed for University of Wales Press

Industrial Gothic

Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature

An archival literary study positing the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror.

Stories about the real horrors of factory life frequently employed the mode of the Gothic, while nineteenth-century Gothic literature began to use new settings—factories, mills, and industrial cities—as backdrops for the horrors that once populated Gothic castles. This study carves out the “Industrial Gothic” as a new area of study that places the literature of the Industrial Revolution in dialogue with the Gothic. The book explores a significant subset of transatlantic nineteenth-century literature that employs the tropes, themes, and rhetoric of the Gothic to portray the real-life horrors of factory life. Using archival materials, Bridget M. Marshall frames the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror.
 

288 pages | 9 halftones | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2021

Gothic Literary Studies

Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory


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Reviews

"Industrial Gothic is a succinctly written, well-researched study, which demonstrates how in its early stages the Gothic offered a reservoir of rhetoric and imagery to powerfully expose and vilify social injustice suffered by the most vulnerable in an era of unprecedented and uncontrolled industrial expansion. Its great merit is undoubtedly creating a new critical category of 'Industrial Gothic' which goes beyond geographical, political and class divisions and encompasses a wide selection of texts, British and American, fiction and non-fiction, canonical and by unknown factory workers. By exploring the way the Gothic was used to depict damage caused by industry not only to human beings but also to the natural environment, Bridget Marshall’s book broadens our understanding of the Gothic as a powerful and effective mode directly engaged with the most acute problems of contemporary times." --Agnieszka Łowczanin, University of Łódź

Agnieszka Lowczanin, University of Lódz | University of Wales Press

"By drawing our attention to a literary form that was used by writers in both England and the United States, Marshall also reminds readers of the impact that industrialism had and continues to have on the global economy. Her study focuses on works that depict the horrors of the textile industry in the nineteenth century, but we in the twenty-first century are perhaps even more aware of the ongoing damage done by forces that have only become even more monstrous with the passage of time."

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Weaving a Transatlantic Gothic Industrial History
Chapter 1: The Industrial Gothic Novel
Chapter 2: Industrializing the Gothic Victim/Heroine: Mill Girls and Factory Girls
Chapter 3: The Carceral Gothic and the Cotton Industrial Complex
Chapter 4: Old and New Industrial Horrors: Monsters and Disabled Bodies
Chapter 5: The Industrial Environment: EcoGothic Horrors
Epilogue: Unravelling the Industrial Gothic

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