As the leaves turn brown and the nights draw in, experience a Gothic Autumn this season with a series of haunting literary events. From the mass hysteria of the witch trials to the chilling, misty moors and the shadowy corners of the Victorian home, delve into the supernatural works of Elizabeth Gaskell and other Gothic women writers. And the best bit is, it’s all online from the comfort of your own home.
Autumn Event Highlights
Here are the top online Gothic events picked just for you!
Online Talk: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic Fiction – An Introduction
Take a turn to the dark side as you explore the mystery and macabre with this introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic writing.
Face the claustrophobic suspense of Lois the Witch, feel the supernatural terror of The Poor Clare and shiver in the snowy horror of The Old Nurse’s Story.
Wed 16 September.
Online Talk: Mothers of the Gothic – Writing the Supernatural
Get ready for a spooky night of literature as we celebrate the women writers who gave birth to a new genre.
From crumbling castles and scary supernatural scenes, novelists like Ann Radcliffe (the highest paid author of the 1790s) and Charlotte Dacre influenced authors including Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.
Discover forgotten women writers including Eleanor Sleath, Eliza Parsons and Maria Regina Roche, all mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
Wed 30 September.
Online Talk: Mary Shelley Beyond Frankenstein
Frankenstein remains one of the most searching meditations on science, loneliness and what it means to be human. Remarkably, Mary Shelley was still a teenager when she wrote it.
From the icy wastes of the Arctic in Frankenstein to the uncanny resurrections and transformations of her shorter fiction, this online event celebrates the enduring imagination of the so-called “Mother of Science Fiction.”
Now Professor Ruston explores how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and lesser-known On Ghosts, Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman, Valerius: The Reanimated Roman and Transformation reveal a lifelong fascination with life and death.
Wed 7 October
Online Talk: The Shadows of Salem – Myth V Reality in Lois the Witch and Other Tales
Does literature reveal the truth behind history or does it simply create a more haunting story? Discover how Elizabeth Gaskell drew on the real Salem Witch Trails of 1692 to write her 1859 novella, Lois the Witch. Plus other witchy tales from the dark side.
Author Livi Michael peels back the Gothic layers of tension and dread to discover where historical fact ends and Victorian fiction begins. How is the figure of the witch a symbol of social anxiety, sexual politics and mass hysteria and what is the real truth of the tale?
Wed 14 October.
Online Event: Elizabeth Gaskell V Anne Brontë – Monsters and Madmen
In the shadows of 19th-century domesticity, writers Elizabeth Gaskell and Anne Brontë used the Gothic to question the status of powerful and abusive men. Beyond the supernatural, how can we read stories like The Grey Woman and The Tennant of Wildfell Hall as powerful criticisms of the real monsters in Victorian society?
Ghost stories like The Old Nurse’s Story use eerie atmospheres and psychological terror to explore family relationships and the weight of the past.
Anne Brontë shattered the silence of the domestic sphere with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. By depicting a woman’s flight from an abusive marriage and her struggle for financial independence, Brontë replaced spectral horrors with something more terrible, the reality of women’s contemporary status.
Wed 21 October
Online Talk: Victorian Gothic – Haunted Houses and Night-time Terrors
Cross the threshold into a world of flickering gaslight and cold stone. Step beyond the velvet curtains of the Victorian home to discover the era’s greatest Gothic writers.
Try some toe-curling horror, from the atmospheric dread of Wuthering Heights to the suffocating psychology of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. We’ll consider terrifying tales from Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Edgar Allan Poe.
Perfect for Halloween!
Wed 28 October
Plus a huge variety of online Talks, Workshops and Book Groups available by clicking this link here.
Keep the Pages Turning
Elizabeth Gaskell’s House is run by Manchester Historic Buildings Trust (charity no. 1080606) and all money gained through private tours, talks, room hire and ticket sales goes towards the ongoing maintenance and running costs of the House. If you would like to support the House with an additional donation you can do so via this link.
