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I’m starting to fall a little behind with these blogs! Reading a story a day and writing up thoughts on it takes quite a bit of time, it turns out. Especially when you’re reading the story in Russian. ‘Queen of Spades’ or Пиковая дама (pikovaya dama) was one of the first stories I ever readContinue reading “Day 9 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Queen of Spades’ by Alexander Pushkin”

Today we’re reading a classic of early American Gothic literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’, which you can read here. For an interesting modern take on the story which resets it in a different historical era and location, I can recommend the music video to Brandon Flowers ‘Can’t Deny My Love’ which you can watchContinue reading “Day 8 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne”

Fittingly for our first Scottish Gothic tale on the list, I spent the day in Edinburgh. I even managed to find a really useful collection of Hogg’s shorter fiction. The ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, of course, is James Hogg whose story ‘The Brownie of the Black Haggs’ was our story for Day 7. You can read itContinue reading “Day 7 ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Brownie of the Black Haggs’ by James Hogg”

October is dedicated to crime here at Romancing the Gothic it (reading about it, not doing it!) Today (7th October), we’re joined by Jordan Welsh to talk ‘How Cosy is your Crime?’ and he has provided a reading and watch list to get people started delving into the world of ‘cosy crime’, right from itsContinue reading “Cosy Crime Reading (and watch) List from Jordan Welsh”

When people think of the Gothic, Mary Shelley’s name is bound to come up. Her early masterpiece Frankenstein (1818) is one of the first examples people come up with when naming Gothic novels. For today’s story, I wanted to introduce some of her lesser known writing. She was a fairly prolific author with several novelsContinue reading “Day 6 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Transformation’ by Mary Shelley”

At the moment, I’m working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham University on a Byron project and am based at Newstead Abbey (Byron’s ancestral home) so it was inevitable that Byron was going to find his way into this year’s list. Today we’re reading his relatively short poem Darkness which you can read here andContinue reading “Day 5 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘Darkness’ by Lord Byron”

I’ve read this story a lot and I’ve talked about it a lot. I’ve taught it, I’ve written about it, I’ve recorded myself talking about it… I want to try and not just repeat myself with this blog so I’m going to point you to my latest relevant talk. In this investigation of the relationshipContinue reading “Day 4 ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Vampyre’ by Polidori”

Today’s poem is from a lesser known writer, Anne Bannerman. One of the great things about these kinds of challenges is finding new authors and I have high hopes that Anne Bannerman will be new to some! Bannerman was a Scottish poet who was particularly known for her sonnet cycles and her Gothic ballads. Today’sContinue reading “Day 3 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Dark Ladie’”

Welcome back to day 2! You can find today’s poem here This is the first of this month’s vampire texts. The Bride of Corinth (original – Die Braut Von Korinth) was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1797. It’s one of the many pieces of poetry, drama and ‘horrid’ writing that made it’s wayContinue reading “Day 2 #AScareADay Challenge – Bride of Corinth”

This is the second annual, story a day challenge for October. You can find the whole list here. I’m also trying something new by blogging about each story (when I can manage to around other commitments). I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments as well. Last year, we started in the eighteenth century.Continue reading “Day 1 #AScareADay challenge – ‘The Lay of the Werewolf’”