A Gothic History of Dangerous Books and their Readers

Why did gothic novels frighten people almost as much as the monsters inside them? Haunted houses, creepy monsters and scary noises are all things we associate with Halloween, but many of them come from Gothic fiction. Gothic fiction spread across Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, helped by new developments in printing, the growth of a mass book market, and the fact that more people were reading for pleasure. As these novels became more popular, people also began worrying about what reading them might do to their readers. Gothic novels were full of fear, violence and the supernatural, and reading them was sometimes seen as a dangerous hobby. In this lecture, Dr Katherine Bowers will look at where Gothic fiction came from, why it became so popular, and why people became so concerned about its readers. She will also look at how Gothic fiction influenced the way fear is created in popular culture, from haunted houses and monsters to many of the sounds, settings and conventions we still recognize today. Dr Katherine Bowers is Associate Professor of Slavic and Eastern European Studies at the University of British Columbia, where she also directs the Centre for European Studies. Her research focuses on genre and narrative theory, particularly in the context of the nineteenth-century Russian novel. Her book, Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic, was published in 2022 by the University of Toronto Press. Agenda 6:00 PM doors open. Guests are welcome to arrive early, order drinks, and have dinner before the lecture begins. 7:00 PM lecture begins, followed by Q&A. 8:15 PM wrap up. Guests are welcome to stay for conversation and another drink.