Event Details

Editor Sophie Raine (Lancaster) and a selection of contributors introduce her new edited book, Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic: Investigations of Pernicious Tales of Terror.

Sophie Raine and Nicole C.Dittmer introduce three mini-papers and a panel discussion about Victorian Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic. Their edited collection, Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic breaks new ground in uncovering penny titles which have been hitherto largely neglected from literary discourse revealing the cultural, social and literary significance of these working-class texts.

Nicole C. Dittmer is Lecturer of Horror and Gender Studies at the College of New Jersey and proofreader and editorial board member at the Studies in Gothic Fiction. Some of her works include ‘Malignancy of Goneril: Nature’s Powerful Warrior’, published in the collection Global Perspectives on Eco-Aesthetics and Eco-Ethics: A Green Critique (2020); a contracted monograph, Monstrous Women and the Victorian EcoGothic (2022); and a forthcoming contribution ‘Victorian Literature and Ecofeminism for The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature (2022) edited by Douglas Vakoch

Sophie Raine is a PhD candidate at Lancaster University researching how ‘other’ spaces are constructed in the penny dreadfuls. Her published articles and chapters include ‘Mapping the Metropolis through Streetwalking in Parker’s The Young Ladies of London, in Victorian Popular Fiction Journal (2019), ‘Subterranean Spaces in the Penny Dreadful’ in the Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic (2021) and ‘Founded on Fact’ Paratextual Politics in Penny Fiction (2023). Sophie is also the peer review editor for the online journal Victorian Network.

Joseph Crawford - ‘A Tale of the Plague’: anti-medical sentiment and epidemic disease in early Victorian popular Gothic fiction. Joseph Crawford is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Exeter. His published works include Raising Milton’s Ghost (2011), Gothic Fiction and the Invention of Terrorism (2013), The x Notes on Contributors Twilight of the Gothic (2014), and Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry, 1825–55 (2019). His current research deals with medical cultures in the early Victorian period.

Rebecca Nesvet - 'Gothic Ideology and Religious Politics in James Malcolm Rymer’s Penny Fiction. Rebecca Nesvet has written about James Malcolm Rymer and Victorian penny fiction for Victorians Institute Journal, Nineteenth Century Studies, Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, Scholarly Editing, xi Notes on Contributors Notes and Queries, Victorians Institute Journal, Victorian Network and the BRANCH Collective timeline. Her edition of Rymer’s A Mystery in Scarlet is being published by the Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education (COVE) at www.covecollective.org

Hannah Priest - ‘Your lot is wretched, old man’: Anxieties of Industry, Empire and England in George Reynolds’s Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf'. Hannah Priest is an Associate Lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the editor of She-Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves (Manchester University Press). She has published numerous articles and chapters on popular culture and literature, with a focus on werewolves, horror and cross-period cultural history. Under the name Hannah Kate, she is a short story writer and radio presenter, and she is the editor-in-chief at Hic Dragones.