What is the Gothic? Few literary genres have attracted so much praise and critical disdain simultaneously. This Guide returns to the Gothic novel's first wave of popularity, between 1764 and 1820, to explore and analyse the full range of contradictory responses that the Gothic evoked. Angela Wright appraises the key criticism surrounding the Gothic fiction of this period, from eighteenth-century accounts to present-day commentaries. Adopting an easy-to-follow thematic approach, the Guide examines:

- contemporary criticism of the Gothic
- the aesthetics of terror and horror
- the influence of the French Revolution
- religion, nationalism and the Gothic
- the relationship between psychoanalysis and the Gothic
- the relationship between gender and the Gothic.

Concise and authoritative, this indispensable Guide provides an overview of Gothic criticism and covers the work of a variety of well-known Gothic writers, such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis and many others.