The Gaverocks

An extensively researched biography of a great Victorian writer. Sabine Baring-Gould was a man of many talents, author of 130 novels and many hundreds of stories and articles. Well-known in Devon, her was a 'squarson' (squire and parson in one), living in a large rectory with his wife and fourteen children. He wrote hymns (including 'Onward Christian Soldiers') and had an insatiable interest in folklore, history, geology and music. He spoke several languages and travelled extensively in Europe. He died just before his 90th birthday, in 1924, leaving a rich legacy which has almost been forgotten today. The book is based on personal papers, the stories and novels, as well as reminiscences and other non-fiction works. He wrote about werewolves, ghosts, Icelandic warriors and Devon legends. He could be fiercely satirical and gently humorous. His greatest love was of Dartmoor - and his adored wife, Grace. Her story is also told in detail here.

By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination, gave it a new lease of life. Gothic—the literature of disturbance and uncertainty—now produced works that reflected domestic fears, sexual crimes, drug filled hallucinations, the terrible secrets of middle class marriage, imperial horror at alien invasion, occult demonism and the insanity of psychopaths. It was from the 1830s onwards that the old gothic castle gave way to the country house drawing room, the dungeon was displaced by the sewers of the city and the villains of early novels became the familiar figures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Grey and Jack the Ripper. After the death of Prince Albert (1861), the Gothic became darker, more morbid, obsessed with demonic lovers, blood sucking ghouls, blood stained murderers and deranged doctors. Whilst the gothic architecture of the Houses of Parliament and the new Puginesque churches upheld a Victorian ideal of sobriety, Christianity and imperial destiny, Gothic literature filed these new spaces with a dread that spread like a plague to America, France, Germany and even Russia. From 1830 to 1914, the period covered by this volume, we saw the emergence of the greats of Gothic literature and the supernatural from Edgar Allan Poe to Emily Bronte, from Sheridan Le Fanu to Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson. Contributors also examine the fin-de-siècle dreamers of decadence such as Arthur Machen, M P Shiel and Vernon Lee and their obsession with the occult, folklore, spiritualism, revenants, ghostly apparitions and cosmic annihilation. This volume explores the period through the prism of architectural history, urban studies, feminism, 'hauntology' and much more. 'Horror', as Poe teaches us, 'is the soul of the plot'.

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.