Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913

A literary history of Cornwall in the Victorian imagination.

What comes to mind when we think of Cornwall? Wild coastlines, golden beaches, sooty miners, and Cornish pasties, perhaps. In the nineteenth century, however, it was considered a frightening and threatening space. This book details the "discovery" of Cornwall in the popular imagination as the Victorians expanded the rail network and how Cornwall was seen as both a foreign nation on England's doorstep and as a haunted place, full of ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and legends. Proposing a distinctly Cornish Gothic tradition, Joan Passey's study offers major new readings of writers such as Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and introduces many Cornish writers to a broader readership.