Projects

Monographs and Research Projects

Angela Wright, AHRC-funded Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now project, 2024-present

Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now is a three-year AHRC-funded project that seeks to re-establish Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) as a major figure in British literature of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as well as to commemorate her as a pioneering writer whose influence is still of considerable cultural significance today. Angela is the Project Lead; Rosie is the project's Research Associate. Find out more via the project's website, Instagram, and Bluesky.  

Angela Wright and Michael Gamer (eds), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe, 2026-present

One output of the Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now project is the forthcoming Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe, the first full, scholarly edition of Radcliffe’s works which will appear between 2025-7. Angela is editing The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Michael is editing The Italian; or, the Confessional of the Black Penitents. Working with general co-editors Gamer and Wright are Project Co-Leads Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University), Deborah Russell (University of York), and Dale Townshend (Manchester Metropolitan University), and volume editors Elizabeth Bobbitt (University of York), Tom Duggett (Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University) and Robert Miles (University of Victoria).

Angela Wright and Dale Townshend (eds), Cambridge Elements in the Gothic series, 2023-present

Since its critical recuperation in the 1980s, scholarly interest in the Gothic has grown exponentially to become the vibrant and highly recruiting area of academic study that it is today. Though initially the preserve of European and Anglo-American critics situated within academic departments of literature, the Gothic has also witnessed a remarkably interdisciplinary dispersal, to the extent that it is now routinely encountered worldwide in such subject areas as film, media, music, theatre and drama, fashion, art, architecture, sociology and human geography.  As its manifestations throughout modern and contemporary popular culture indicate, the Gothic mode holds considerable appeal for audiences beyond the academy too.

Capitalising upon this widespread interest, the Elements in the Gothic series seeks to publish short, research-led yet accessible studies of the foundational or core ‘elements’ within the capacious field of Gothic Studies. While intervening in this way in a number of long-standing critical debates, the series also makes provision for the showcasing of new and emergent lines of scholarly enquiry, bringing to a range of specialist and non-specialist readers some of the most exciting developments in recent Gothic scholarship.

Kathleen Hudson and Mary Going, Religious Horror and the Ecogothic, 2024

Religious Horror and the Ecogothic explores the intersections of Anglophone Christianity and the Ecogothic, a subgenre that explores the ecocritical in Gothic literature, film, and media. Acknowledging the impact of Christian ideologies upon interpretations of human relationships with the environment, the Ecogothic in turn interrogates spiritual identity and humanity’s darker impulses in relation to ecological systems. Through a survey of Ecogothic texts from the eighteenth century to the present day, this book illuminates the ways in which a Christianized understanding of hierarchy, dominion, fear, and sublimity shapes reactions to the environment and conceptions of humanity’s place therein. It interrogates the discourses which inform environmental policy, as well as definitions of the "human" in a rapidly changing world.

Rosie Whitcombe, '"The lady's talent for description leads her to excess": Radcliffe, Landscape, and Gender', chapter published in Religious Horror and the Ecogothic, 2024

A 1794 review of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho for The British Critic observed that the "lady’s talent for description leads her to excess. We have somewhat too much of evening and morning; of woods, and hills, and veils, and streams." The reviewer, "so fatigued" by Radcliffe’s language, argued that the novel contained "too much of the terrific," with some sections "tedious" and others "extravagant"; her language at the beginning of the novel, in particular, he called "too poetical a prose." The reviewer objected to what he perceived as Radcliffe’s "excess," particularly regarding her descriptions of landscapes and the natural world – and he was not alone.

By reading Radcliffe through an Ecogothic lens, this chapter will examine how far a critique of Radcliffe’s excess can be read as a gendered criticism. Excess is traditionally figured as a dangerous female flaw—taking too much, doing too much, feeling too much—that has roots in the biblical repression of women, most notably with Eve and The Fall. But this dismissal of Radcliffe’s "excess" ignores the vital role it plays in the narratives of her heroines. It also risks overlooking Radcliffe’s conscious engagement with what we might refer to today as the Ecogothic, specifically her heroines’ intense and affecting participatory experience with the natural world.

Andrew Smith, Gothic Fiction and the Writing of Trauma, 1914-1934: The Ghosts of World War One, 2022

This book examines the representation of the ghost-soldier in literature published from 1914 1934 both marking the presence of trauma and attempting to make sense of trauma. Andrew Smith examines short stories, novels, poems and memoirs that employ ghosts to reflect upon feelings of loss, paralleling the literary context with accounts of shell-shock which construe the damaged soldier as psychologically missing and therefore spectre-like. The author argues that literary and non-literary texts repeatedly deploy a form of the uncanny, familiar from a Gothic tradition, as way of reflecting upon grief. In support of this claim, he draws on fiction by well-known authors such as M. R. James, E. F. Benson, Dorothy L. Sayers and Dennis Wheatley, alongside largely forgotten contributions to The Strand and other periodical publications such as The Occult Review.

Jonathan Rayner, Australian Gothic: A Cinema of Horrors, 2022

The term 'Gothic' has been applied to examples of Australian cinema since the 1970s, often in arbitrary and divergent ways. This book examines a wide range of Australian films to trace their Gothic resemblances, characteristics and meanings. Concentrating on the occurrence of Gothic motifs, characters, landscapes and narratives, it argues for the recognition and relevance of a coherent Gothic heritage in Australian film. Considering a plethora of Gothic representatives in relation to four consistent and illuminating continuities (images of the family, ideas of monstrosity, generic hybridity and the occurrence of the sublime), this study investigates the appearance and asserts the significance of Australian Gothic films within their national, cultural, literary and cinematic traditions.

Frances Babbage: 'Hybrid Forms: Nights at the Circus and its adaptations', chapter published in Angela Carter's Futures: Representations, Adaptations and Legacies, 2022

Edited by Sarah Gamble and Anna Watz, this book explores Angela Carter's creative and critical afterlives as well as the multiple ways in which her work is amenable to being read through current critical and cultural theories.

Examining topics as diverse as theatrical adaptations of Carter's novels, her 'post-human politics', magic realism and the inspiration of her work for contemporary writers, the essays in this collection demonstrate Carter's continuing relevance into the 21st century.

This volume will appeal both to scholars and students of contemporary women's writing, British fiction, critical theory, reception studies, and gender studies.