Women and the Gothic

Avril Horner is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Kingston University. With Sue Zlosnik she has co-authored many articles and several books, including Daphne du Maurier: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination (1998), Gothic and the Comic Turn (2005) and Women and the Gothic (2016). Other works include Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934-1995 (with Anne Rowe, 2015) and Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence (2024). Alone, she has published essays on writers such as Djuna Barnes, Kate Chopin, Iris Murdoch and Carol Ann Duffy. Her biography of Barbara Comyns will be published in 2024. Sue Zlosnik is Emeritus Professor of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and former co-President of the International Gothic Association. With Avril Horner, she has published six books, including Daphne du Maurier: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination (1998), Gothic and the Comic Turn (2005), The Edinburgh Companion to Women and the Gothic (2016) as well as numerous essays and articles. Alone, she has published essays on writers as diverse as J. R. R. Tolkien and Chuck Palahniuk and a monograph, Patrick McGrath (2011). She is co-editor (with Agnes Andeweg) of Gothic Kinship (2013).

Unapologetically feminist and woman-focused, Women and the Gothic is a bold, hip, theoretically sophisticated collection written by new and established scholars, that examines the complex work of the Gothic in relation to cultural representations of women. Covering a breathtakingly broad cross-section of subject matter, cultural forms/media, and historical phenomena, including fourth-wave feminism, Horner and Zlosnik have produced a highly readable, welcome addition to the series.

• Introduction, Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik; Part I: Family Matters; 1. Heroines in Flight, Angela Wright; 2. Madwomen and Attics, Laurence Talairach-Vielmas; 3. Mothers and Others, Ginette Carpenter; 4. The Gothic Girl Child, Lucie Armitt; 5. 'A Woman’s Place', Diana Wallace; Part II: Trangressions; 6. Wicked Women, Anne Williams; 7. The Female Gothic Body, Marie Mulvey-Roberts; 8. Spectral Femininity, Rebecca Munford; 9. Women and the Law, Sue Chaplin; 10. Female Vampirism, Gina Wisker; Part III: New Directions; 11. Queering the Female Gothic, Ardel Haefele-Thomas, 12. No Country for Old Women, Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik; 13. Virtual Gothic Women, Catherine Spooner; 14. Formations of Player Agency and Gender in Gothic Video Games; Tanya Krzywinska.