Victorian

New Chapter: The Supernatural Fourth Dimension in Lucas Malet: Victorian Gothic
New Chapter: The Supernatural Fourth Dimension in Lucas Malet: Victorian Gothic
March 10, 2021 In All Blog Posts No Comment

I’m very excited to share my latest article “The Supernatural Fourth Dimension in Lucas Malet’s The Carissima and The Gateless Barrier” which is included in The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic. This article is the first examination of Lucas Malet’s work against the exciting Victorian phenomenon of the supernatural fourth dimension. While much of my research has focused on space, the supernatural and the fourth dimension, this article is my first published foray into the wonderful writing of Lucas Malet.

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2020 Mythopoeic Awards Finalist: Informing the Inklings
2020 Mythopoeic Awards Finalist: Informing the Inklings
February 2, 2021 In All Blog Posts No Comment

I am excited to learn that an edited collection I contributed to is a finalist in the 2020 Mythopoeic Awards! Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy (2018), edited by Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffrey-Johnson, is nominated in the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies.

This is a wonderful collection to be a part of, and this award nomination is testament to the excellent scholarship and dedicated editing that went into this volume. Emerging out of the George MacDonald Society conference held at the University of Oxford in 2014, this collection represents much of the new and exciting scholarship emerging around Victorian author George MacDonald, and his contemporaries like Charles Kingsley, Lewis Carroll, Andrew Lang and more. This volume explores how these Victorian writers and their contexts helped pave the way for modern fantasy as we know it in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and the Inklings.

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The essay I was honoured to contribute is called ‘Dreaming into Hyperspace: The Victorian Spatial Imagination and the Origins of Modern Fantasy in MacDonald and Carroll.’

Read more about this volume in my earlier blog post.

Purchase this book online in a range of places, including here.

See the full list of Mythopoeic Awards finalists.

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Upcoming Talk: “The Gothic Horse”, Macquarie University, 5 March 2020
Upcoming Talk: “The Gothic Horse”, Macquarie University, 5 March 2020
March 1, 2020 In All Blog Posts No Comment

Do you like ghosts, goblins, and all things gothic? What about horses, horse-riding and all things equestrian? What happens if you put both of those things together? Heads will roll…

On Thursday the 5th March I will be talking about the evolution of the dark, demonic, ghostly horse and rider (yes, the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow fame, along with his ancestors and descendants!) as the first speaker in the Macquarie University Department of English’s 2020 Research Seminar Series. (more…)

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Sinking our Teeth into Netflix’s Dracula: Review (New Podcast Episode!)
Sinking our Teeth into Netflix’s Dracula: Review (New Podcast Episode!)
January 29, 2020 In All Blog Posts 1 Comment

Dracula (BBC and Netflix, 2020) is the latest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic Victorian Gothic vampire novel. Dark, gory, and beautifully cinematic, it both returns to and departs from the novel in many different ways. Indulging liberally in well recognised gothic and horror tropes, locations and characters, it sinks its teeth into the long history of Dracula adaptations with relish, bundling them together into something that feels both fresh and familiar. But the question of how successful this combination is has stoked (sorry, I had to) some contention. (more…)

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Gothic Horsemanship in Washington Irving & Edgar Allan Poe: New Chapter Published
Gothic Horsemanship in Washington Irving & Edgar Allan Poe: New Chapter Published
January 19, 2020 In All Blog Posts No Comment

I’m very excited to share the newly released collection of essays entitled Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out, edited by Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson, and published by Palgrave MacMillan (with gorgeous design and quality production work). Brimming with excellent new scholarship on the creepiest manifestations of animals in gothic fiction, from rats and cats to spiders and snails, this volume charts new territory in bringing together the fields of gothic and animal studies. My own chapter, entitled “Hellish Horses and Monstrous Men: Gothic Horsemanship in Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe,” shares some of my recent research into the ways that gothic fiction uses horses and their relationship to their riders to signal changing cultural boundaries around desirable and undesirable masculinity. (more…)

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Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Dreams, Hyperspace & Victorian Fantasy: Informing the Inklings
Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Dreams, Hyperspace & Victorian Fantasy: Informing the Inklings
July 7, 2019 In Academic Research All Blog Posts News, Announcements & Events No Comment

I am very excited to announce the publication of a wonderful collection of essays entitled Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy, edited by Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson (Winged Lion Press, 2018). Based on ground-breaking research presented at the George MacDonald Society Conference at The University of Oxford, 2014, which you can read about here, this collection of essays represents new directions not only in George MacDonald studies but also studies in Victorian fantasy, imagination, philosophy, science and more besides. Each of the twelve essays explores how MacDonald and fellow literary figures such as S. T. Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley, and Andrew Lang paved the way for the group of twentieth-century fantasy authors known as “the Inklings,” including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. With contributions from major critics in the field such as Stephen Prickett, Malcolm Guite, Jean Webb and Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, as well as newer voices from a range of international scholars, this book treads new territory while returning us to the roots of modern fantasy literature. (more…)

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