Gothic at War: Masculinity in Conflict, 1760-1818

Considers how war and conflict were central to the Gothic as a developing genre in the late eighteenth century.

The Gothic at War explores and analyzes how Gothic fiction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries utilized the form to explore the anxieties and fears of a nation at war, tracing a lineage and legacy of engagement from Horace Walpole through to Clara Reeve and Ann Radcliffe and beyond. The figure of the soldier is prevalent in the pages of the Gothic novels of this period. He is sometimes a heroic pinnacle of masculinity, sometimes a devious villain, and yet also often a fraught, uncertain figure.

This book unravels the Gothic's engagement with Britain's anxieties and ideologies about the military and nationality as the conflict following the French Revolution unfolded.