Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797-1830

The Gothic Chapbook, Bluebook, and Shilling Shocker surveys the rise of the short tale of terror and horror at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

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The Gothic Chapbook, Bluebook, and Shilling Shocker, 1797-1835 breaks new ground surveying the origins of the gothic chapbook, its publishers and authors, in order to conclusively establish the impact these pamphlets had on the development of the gothic genre. Considered the illegitimate offspring of the gothic novel, the lowly chapbook flooded the marketplace in the late eighteenth century, creating a separate and distinct secondary market for tales of terror. The trade was driven by a handful of individuals who were booksellers and dealers, circulating library proprietors, stationers, and small publishers who produced well over four hundred chapbooks, bluebooks and shilling shockers containing gothic tales from magazines, redactions of popular novels, extractions of entire inset tales, and original tales of terror. This study responds to the urgent and pressing need to contextualise the gothic chapbook in ascertaining a more concise and comprehensive view of the entire gothic genre.