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Very Short Introductions #329
The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction
The Gothic is wildly diverse. It can refer to ecclesiastical architecture, supernatural fiction, cult horror films, and a distinctive style of rock music. It has influenced political theorists and social reformers, as well as Victorian home décor and contemporary fashion. Nick Groom shows how the Gothic has come to encompass so many meanings by telling the story of the Gothic from the ancient tribe who sacked Rome to the alternative subculture of the present day.
This unique Very Short Introduction reveals that the Gothic has predominantly been a way of understanding and responding to the past. Time after time, the Gothic has been invoked in order to reveal what lies behind conventional history. It is a way of disclosing secrets, whether in the constitutional politics of seventeenth-century England or the racial politics of the United States. While contexts change, the Gothic perpetually regards the past with fascination, both yearning and horrified. It reminds us that neither societies nor individuals can escape the consequences of their actions.
The anatomy of the Gothic is richly complex and perversely contradictory, and so the thirteen chapters here range deliberately widely. This is the first time that the entire story of the Gothic has been written as a continuous history: from the historians of late antiquity to the gardens of Georgian England, from the mediaeval cult of the macabre to German Expressionist cinema, from Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy to American consumer society, from folk ballads to vampires, from the past to the present.
This unique Very Short Introduction reveals that the Gothic has predominantly been a way of understanding and responding to the past. Time after time, the Gothic has been invoked in order to reveal what lies behind conventional history. It is a way of disclosing secrets, whether in the constitutional politics of seventeenth-century England or the racial politics of the United States. While contexts change, the Gothic perpetually regards the past with fascination, both yearning and horrified. It reminds us that neither societies nor individuals can escape the consequences of their actions.
The anatomy of the Gothic is richly complex and perversely contradictory, and so the thirteen chapters here range deliberately widely. This is the first time that the entire story of the Gothic has been written as a continuous history: from the historians of late antiquity to the gardens of Georgian England, from the mediaeval cult of the macabre to German Expressionist cinema, from Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy to American consumer society, from folk ballads to vampires, from the past to the present.
163 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 2012
67 people are currently reading
894 people want to read
About the author
Nick Groom
30 books28 followersNick Groom, known as the “Prof of Goth,” is professor of English at Exeter University, UK. His previous titles include The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction, and The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year, which was shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and came runner-up for BBC Countryfile Book of the Year.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
May 20, 2018
One of the poorer entries in the Very Short Introductions series.
Groom sets out to cover Gothic from just about every possible aspect and, to a degree, he does just that. But the coverage is so superficial (names and dates and a very occasional sketch of general style) and the effort made to relate the various uses of the term to each other so lacking in any real drive or focus that whole enterprise comes off as choppy, amateurish, and incohesive.
Groom occasionally tosses out what might be an interesting insight (linking Gothic tales of terror to discomfort with capitalism rather than unease over changing sexual mores and gender roles) but he never expands on these one sentence critiques nor does he link them to other aspects of the Gothic before or after in any meaningful way. And at least some of the passages he cites seemingly in support (hard to tell since he never actually engages in argument) appear to contradict his opinions in the most graphic manner.
I can't recommend this even as a starter text.
Groom sets out to cover Gothic from just about every possible aspect and, to a degree, he does just that. But the coverage is so superficial (names and dates and a very occasional sketch of general style) and the effort made to relate the various uses of the term to each other so lacking in any real drive or focus that whole enterprise comes off as choppy, amateurish, and incohesive.
Groom occasionally tosses out what might be an interesting insight (linking Gothic tales of terror to discomfort with capitalism rather than unease over changing sexual mores and gender roles) but he never expands on these one sentence critiques nor does he link them to other aspects of the Gothic before or after in any meaningful way. And at least some of the passages he cites seemingly in support (hard to tell since he never actually engages in argument) appear to contradict his opinions in the most graphic manner.
I can't recommend this even as a starter text.
March 14, 2014
To be honest, I have never given much thought to the whole concept of the “Gothic.” On the surface of it, there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between an ancient Germanic tribe, medieval architecture, Victorian literature, and modern alienated high school kids that dress completely in black. In “The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction” Nick Groom aims to explain how all of those seemingly disparate phenomena are in fact connected and are part of one unbroken historical and cultural thread.
This book is part history, part cultural analysis, and part literally and film theory. Groom seems to be equally comfortable within each one of those fields and throughout the book presents his considerable erudition. The book is organized historically, and it starts off with the history of the Gothic tribes and their significant impact on the late Antiquity, that infamously culminated with the sacking of Rome and the end of Western Roman Empire. It continues through the Middle Ages, especially in England, and it covers the devastating impact that the turmoil of the sixteenth century had the English culture and its relationship to its own past. The book goes on to talk about the Gothic influences and themes in English and American literature, twentieth century film, and modern music culture.
The writing style is very fluid and engaging, and this book is immensely fun to read. It’s as far from a dusty academic tome as they come. Groom tells an interesting story and manages to keep the reader intrigued and informed at the same time. Unfortunately, after reading this book I am still not persuaded that various peoples, styles and cultures that bear the name “Gothic” are part of a single undivided whole. Groom relies greatly on rhetoric and masterful narrative, and doesn’t pay much attention to the careful analysis. There has been no attempt at any point to even try to define the term “Gothic,” and at too many points throughout the book I felt that it had been applied liberally to any social or artistic genre that suited the author’s fancy. Groom makes many sweeping generalizations and grand statements, often without even a hint of trying to give a justification for them. For instance, all of the American nineteenth century literature had been reduced to a veiled issue of race and/or slavery. This does grave injustice to the innovative and complex storylines of Poe or Melville. Ultimately, I feel that this introduction itself is very “Gothic.” It relies more on melodramatic elements than a clear and straightforward narrative. It obscures and enlightens, often at the same time. Like Frankenstein’s monster it is made out of many disparate parts that are stitched together, but the sense of organic whole is never achieved. It employs a heavy dose of the favorite ghouls of modern academic writing – race, class, gender. I still immensely enjoyed reading this book, but it’s far from an ideal source of information of what’s really meant by the term “Gothic.”
This book is part history, part cultural analysis, and part literally and film theory. Groom seems to be equally comfortable within each one of those fields and throughout the book presents his considerable erudition. The book is organized historically, and it starts off with the history of the Gothic tribes and their significant impact on the late Antiquity, that infamously culminated with the sacking of Rome and the end of Western Roman Empire. It continues through the Middle Ages, especially in England, and it covers the devastating impact that the turmoil of the sixteenth century had the English culture and its relationship to its own past. The book goes on to talk about the Gothic influences and themes in English and American literature, twentieth century film, and modern music culture.
The writing style is very fluid and engaging, and this book is immensely fun to read. It’s as far from a dusty academic tome as they come. Groom tells an interesting story and manages to keep the reader intrigued and informed at the same time. Unfortunately, after reading this book I am still not persuaded that various peoples, styles and cultures that bear the name “Gothic” are part of a single undivided whole. Groom relies greatly on rhetoric and masterful narrative, and doesn’t pay much attention to the careful analysis. There has been no attempt at any point to even try to define the term “Gothic,” and at too many points throughout the book I felt that it had been applied liberally to any social or artistic genre that suited the author’s fancy. Groom makes many sweeping generalizations and grand statements, often without even a hint of trying to give a justification for them. For instance, all of the American nineteenth century literature had been reduced to a veiled issue of race and/or slavery. This does grave injustice to the innovative and complex storylines of Poe or Melville. Ultimately, I feel that this introduction itself is very “Gothic.” It relies more on melodramatic elements than a clear and straightforward narrative. It obscures and enlightens, often at the same time. Like Frankenstein’s monster it is made out of many disparate parts that are stitched together, but the sense of organic whole is never achieved. It employs a heavy dose of the favorite ghouls of modern academic writing – race, class, gender. I still immensely enjoyed reading this book, but it’s far from an ideal source of information of what’s really meant by the term “Gothic.”
May 12, 2025
An overview of everything from the Goths and huns to Gothic literature and architecture, to the youth subculture.
Perhaps over-general, to the detriment of the more interesting chapters (for me) on Gothic literature and Victorian culture. Various interesting tit-bits however, such as the Medieval ballad being a pre-cursor to the true crime genre.
Perhaps over-general, to the detriment of the more interesting chapters (for me) on Gothic literature and Victorian culture. Various interesting tit-bits however, such as the Medieval ballad being a pre-cursor to the true crime genre.
June 3, 2022
I imagine that just about anyone who picks this up is going to be looking for an overview of Gothic literature, specifically, with maybe some sections on film and music too. I was. But as his somewhat vague title hints (it's not Gothic Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, after all) Groom's interests are much broader and more amorphous than that.
It's pretty standard for discussions of Gothic media to begin with some notes on the term "Gothic" itself: first derived from the Rome-sacking Goths, later applied to medieval architecture, by the 18th century a generic shorthand for all things Middle or Dark Ages, and by extension all things archaic, gloomy, superstitious, and sinister. It's interesting background to be sure, but arguably not all that relevant in probing the tropes and enduring themes of the literature itself. After all, as Groom himself notes glancingly, the term didn't even become synonymous with the literary genre until the 1920s.
Groom sees it differently. For him, understanding "the Gothic" means understanding every individual context in which the word itself has been used from antiquity to the modern day, and then trying to find the common thread. "Histories of literary Gothic," he bemoans in his introduction, ". . . usually begin in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto and ignore the rich semantic history of the term in the centuries preceding Walpole's novel." In reaction, Groom himself spends six and a half or so of his thirteen chapters discussing the pre-literary uses of the term, finally arriving at Walpole on page 69 and even then devoting more page-space to the author's Gothic Revival estate than his seminal novel, which wasn't—per Groom—the first Gothic novel anyway. (That honor he awards to Thomas Leland's Longsword, published two years earlier.)
The general sweep of Groom's argument is that, from Rome on down to today, the concept of "the Gothic" has existed mainly to pose a rustic, rugged contrast to the controlled elegance of "the Classical." Therefore we have the Visigoths vs. the Romans, Gothic Revival architecture vs. Neoclassical architecture, and of course Gothic literature itself as a counterpoint to the self-assured rationalism of the Enlightenment. Groom is especially interested in the way the concept of the Gothic (or "Gothick") was historically wielded in the English political sphere, where—contrary to our more familiar associations with gloom and barbarism—it was often used to point to an idealized, democratized Anglo-Saxon past.
I should say here that Groom actually makes these points pretty convincingly, and this would no doubt be an illuminating topic for a scholarly monograph or journal article. But I still don't think this primarily linguistic approach is an appropriate angle for an entry in this particular book series, marketed as an introductory overview for people who will, as I said earlier, almost certainly be looking for information on "the Gothic" as a specific literary and artistic aesthetic rather than a millennia-spanning sociocultural ethos. Groom laments in the introduction that, due to overzealous academics eager to apply the term to everything, "the Gothic now risks being emptied or nullified as a meaningful term—indeed, one critic has claimed that 'In the twentieth century Gothic is everywhere and nowhere.'" But rather than countering that trend, Groom only intensifies it; a newcomer to this topic would finish this book with their head full of ancient European tribal migrations, innovations in medieval church-building, Elizabethan revenge dramas, Jacobean ballads, the English Civil War, Whig politics, 18th-century decorating fads, Reformation and Victorian religious disputes, German Expressionist film, the music of Bauhaus, and maybe even a little bit of Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe, but would be none the wiser about Byronic heroes, the madwoman in the attic, or the uses of horror vs. terror.
Even when Groom does finally get around to discussing Gothic literature, he's too concerned with supporting his larger argument to do the books and authors he mentions any real justice. He willfully rejects many of the most popular critical frameworks for interpreting Gothic texts (psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory), I suppose because they don't play very well into his particular sociopolitical reading, which in turn leads him to such bizarre conclusions as the claim that Carmilla and Dracula don't have a sexual subtext. Needless to say the so-called "female Gothic" tradition, and indeed most women writers of Gothic novels post-Anne Radcliffe, are barely mentioned. But then again, there's a lot he doesn't mention; I'd estimate that maybe 15% of this book is actually given over to literary discussion. (Gothic buildings, I'd say, get at least 25%.) It's so cursory that I genuinely believe Oxford University Press could, and probably should, release another VSI entry specifically on Gothic literature to make up the deficit.
(As sort of a last, standalone critique I also feel the need to flag up Groom's distasteful final paragraph, which tries to turn the 2007 murder of English teenager Sophie Lancaster—who was publicly beaten to death for wearing goth or "mosher" clothes—into some kind of rallying cry for the Gothic spirit. Who the hell let him keep that in there?)
Given these glaring flaws and offenses, even my three stars probably seem generous. I certainly found Groom an off-putting authorial presence, and I think this would be pretty useless as an introduction to "the Gothic" in the sense that most people understand that term. But coming to this text with a fair amount of prior reading on the subject, I admit I did learn quite a bit about the more obscure prehistory of the genre, and found at least parts of the book to be an interesting and well-sourced—if also frequently frustrating—exploration of a complicated term and the ideas it has evoked through the centuries. So definitely not recommended for most readers, but maybe not totally devoid of value either.
It's pretty standard for discussions of Gothic media to begin with some notes on the term "Gothic" itself: first derived from the Rome-sacking Goths, later applied to medieval architecture, by the 18th century a generic shorthand for all things Middle or Dark Ages, and by extension all things archaic, gloomy, superstitious, and sinister. It's interesting background to be sure, but arguably not all that relevant in probing the tropes and enduring themes of the literature itself. After all, as Groom himself notes glancingly, the term didn't even become synonymous with the literary genre until the 1920s.
Groom sees it differently. For him, understanding "the Gothic" means understanding every individual context in which the word itself has been used from antiquity to the modern day, and then trying to find the common thread. "Histories of literary Gothic," he bemoans in his introduction, ". . . usually begin in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto and ignore the rich semantic history of the term in the centuries preceding Walpole's novel." In reaction, Groom himself spends six and a half or so of his thirteen chapters discussing the pre-literary uses of the term, finally arriving at Walpole on page 69 and even then devoting more page-space to the author's Gothic Revival estate than his seminal novel, which wasn't—per Groom—the first Gothic novel anyway. (That honor he awards to Thomas Leland's Longsword, published two years earlier.)
The general sweep of Groom's argument is that, from Rome on down to today, the concept of "the Gothic" has existed mainly to pose a rustic, rugged contrast to the controlled elegance of "the Classical." Therefore we have the Visigoths vs. the Romans, Gothic Revival architecture vs. Neoclassical architecture, and of course Gothic literature itself as a counterpoint to the self-assured rationalism of the Enlightenment. Groom is especially interested in the way the concept of the Gothic (or "Gothick") was historically wielded in the English political sphere, where—contrary to our more familiar associations with gloom and barbarism—it was often used to point to an idealized, democratized Anglo-Saxon past.
I should say here that Groom actually makes these points pretty convincingly, and this would no doubt be an illuminating topic for a scholarly monograph or journal article. But I still don't think this primarily linguistic approach is an appropriate angle for an entry in this particular book series, marketed as an introductory overview for people who will, as I said earlier, almost certainly be looking for information on "the Gothic" as a specific literary and artistic aesthetic rather than a millennia-spanning sociocultural ethos. Groom laments in the introduction that, due to overzealous academics eager to apply the term to everything, "the Gothic now risks being emptied or nullified as a meaningful term—indeed, one critic has claimed that 'In the twentieth century Gothic is everywhere and nowhere.'" But rather than countering that trend, Groom only intensifies it; a newcomer to this topic would finish this book with their head full of ancient European tribal migrations, innovations in medieval church-building, Elizabethan revenge dramas, Jacobean ballads, the English Civil War, Whig politics, 18th-century decorating fads, Reformation and Victorian religious disputes, German Expressionist film, the music of Bauhaus, and maybe even a little bit of Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe, but would be none the wiser about Byronic heroes, the madwoman in the attic, or the uses of horror vs. terror.
Even when Groom does finally get around to discussing Gothic literature, he's too concerned with supporting his larger argument to do the books and authors he mentions any real justice. He willfully rejects many of the most popular critical frameworks for interpreting Gothic texts (psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory), I suppose because they don't play very well into his particular sociopolitical reading, which in turn leads him to such bizarre conclusions as the claim that Carmilla and Dracula don't have a sexual subtext. Needless to say the so-called "female Gothic" tradition, and indeed most women writers of Gothic novels post-Anne Radcliffe, are barely mentioned. But then again, there's a lot he doesn't mention; I'd estimate that maybe 15% of this book is actually given over to literary discussion. (Gothic buildings, I'd say, get at least 25%.) It's so cursory that I genuinely believe Oxford University Press could, and probably should, release another VSI entry specifically on Gothic literature to make up the deficit.
(As sort of a last, standalone critique I also feel the need to flag up Groom's distasteful final paragraph, which tries to turn the 2007 murder of English teenager Sophie Lancaster—who was publicly beaten to death for wearing goth or "mosher" clothes—into some kind of rallying cry for the Gothic spirit. Who the hell let him keep that in there?)
Given these glaring flaws and offenses, even my three stars probably seem generous. I certainly found Groom an off-putting authorial presence, and I think this would be pretty useless as an introduction to "the Gothic" in the sense that most people understand that term. But coming to this text with a fair amount of prior reading on the subject, I admit I did learn quite a bit about the more obscure prehistory of the genre, and found at least parts of the book to be an interesting and well-sourced—if also frequently frustrating—exploration of a complicated term and the ideas it has evoked through the centuries. So definitely not recommended for most readers, but maybe not totally devoid of value either.
October 19, 2018
“In particular the school of melancholy--David Mallett’s The Excursion (1726), Mark Akenside’s Pleasures of the Imagination (1744), Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1744-5)--was obsessed by the sublimity of the past, how it dwarfed individual consciousness.”
August 28, 2022
Gothic is a label used on many things: architecture, literature, and film. How are these connected? What are the Goths’ contribution to them? I can’t say that I feel illuminated after reading this rather disconnected VSI. There are some details about some Gothic novels, literary commentaries, how Gothic architecture evolved, a bit of history here and there. But it is just not clear what are some deep connection between the different art forms. If the author is even trying to convey that idea, it really didn’t come cross at all. Then again, it might be just me.
December 8, 2021
What a joke of a book. This is the third in the series that I've read and while all of them are pretty substandard this one is woeful.
British academics are braindead, everything must have marxism and dull dated lefty politics shoved into it somehow. Hey guys, did you know Dracula is about Marxist economics!?! The vampire is like a consumer man.... Here's a sex scene.
The second half of the book was even shittier. How do you ignore two hundred years of American Gothic literature and just roll it into two pages of "American Gothic is all about Racism" ignoring New England, Western Gothic and the wide vistas of the Prairie that rival the 19th century Romantics.
Movies that completely ignore the Suburban Gothic of Tim Burton... No mention of Edward Scissor Hands, no Beetlejuice?
No mention of The Cure...
GTFO
This is hands down a shit book.
British academics are braindead, everything must have marxism and dull dated lefty politics shoved into it somehow. Hey guys, did you know Dracula is about Marxist economics!?! The vampire is like a consumer man.... Here's a sex scene.
The second half of the book was even shittier. How do you ignore two hundred years of American Gothic literature and just roll it into two pages of "American Gothic is all about Racism" ignoring New England, Western Gothic and the wide vistas of the Prairie that rival the 19th century Romantics.
Movies that completely ignore the Suburban Gothic of Tim Burton... No mention of Edward Scissor Hands, no Beetlejuice?
No mention of The Cure...
GTFO
This is hands down a shit book.
June 30, 2014
Very short but goes through the history of "gothic' from the original eastern european tribes through architecture up through the writings of Edgar Allan Poe to the more recent gothic rock and moody movies. However after reading it I am still not happy about the connection between these different meanings of the word "gothic."
January 2, 2025
This book was recommended as a non-mandatory introductory text prior to a class I took on Gothic literature when I was at university, which I only got around to reading now-- I realise I wasn't missing out on much.
It's clear that the author has a preference for Gothic literature, but only in it's most distilled form as a strictly British 18th century phenomenon. American Gothic, which I believe is worthy of its own book entirely, is only afforded a few bare pages. This focus on literature is understandable, given that the author is a lecturer in English Literature, but I feel even this isn't done particularly well (though I imagine he would produce better work, if given more breathing room). I'm honestly confused as to why he didn't just write an Introduction to Gothic Literature, rather than attempt to chart a history all the way from the Germanic Goths to Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Besides, if you're going to put out a text that claims to be an introduction to the history of the mutable term of The Gothic, you should surely learn a little more about the music genre than what could easily be skimmed from the first paragraph of Wikipedia. Groom has some interesting insights within the sections of the book he actually has a vested interest in, but these are unfortunately not expanded upon, which is perhaps more a criticism of the format of the book series rather than the author himself.
I actually couldn't fault the author that much, as I recognised I maybe wasn't the intended audience, until the abrupt end. The author tacks on a haphazard last minute dedication to Sophie Lancaster, a young woman murdered in England in 2007 for being part of the Goth subculture. It reads as self-congratulatory and insincere:
'If the Gothic is as relevant today as it has been for the past millennium and a half, it is not because the Goths are still at the gate, it is --and always has been-- the 'normals' who are the real threat. Which side are you on? I am on the side of Sophie Lancaster.' (p. 143)
It's embarassing for a nearly 60-year-old lecturer to use the phrase 'the normals' and the rhetorical question comes across as incredibly tacky. Don't use the death of a young woman to try and pad out a zinger ending to your mediocre book.
It's clear that the author has a preference for Gothic literature, but only in it's most distilled form as a strictly British 18th century phenomenon. American Gothic, which I believe is worthy of its own book entirely, is only afforded a few bare pages. This focus on literature is understandable, given that the author is a lecturer in English Literature, but I feel even this isn't done particularly well (though I imagine he would produce better work, if given more breathing room). I'm honestly confused as to why he didn't just write an Introduction to Gothic Literature, rather than attempt to chart a history all the way from the Germanic Goths to Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Besides, if you're going to put out a text that claims to be an introduction to the history of the mutable term of The Gothic, you should surely learn a little more about the music genre than what could easily be skimmed from the first paragraph of Wikipedia. Groom has some interesting insights within the sections of the book he actually has a vested interest in, but these are unfortunately not expanded upon, which is perhaps more a criticism of the format of the book series rather than the author himself.
I actually couldn't fault the author that much, as I recognised I maybe wasn't the intended audience, until the abrupt end. The author tacks on a haphazard last minute dedication to Sophie Lancaster, a young woman murdered in England in 2007 for being part of the Goth subculture. It reads as self-congratulatory and insincere:
'If the Gothic is as relevant today as it has been for the past millennium and a half, it is not because the Goths are still at the gate, it is --and always has been-- the 'normals' who are the real threat. Which side are you on? I am on the side of Sophie Lancaster.' (p. 143)
It's embarassing for a nearly 60-year-old lecturer to use the phrase 'the normals' and the rhetorical question comes across as incredibly tacky. Don't use the death of a young woman to try and pad out a zinger ending to your mediocre book.
February 13, 2021
Gothic is a difficult word to define. What do fine cathedrals, the love of nature, fascination with darkness, freedom, and invading eastern hordes have in common? In The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction Nick Groom tries to bring some order to this chaos. The Very Short Introduction series is defined by its brevity and Groom does an admirable job of trying to tie all these disparate elements together. Roughly a chronological treatment, it begins with the Germanic Goths and comes up to near the present.
The Goths, barbarians to Romans, valued freedom. To me this seems to be the heart of the gothic. Groom explores how this came to influence architecture—the gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Concerns with death bring Shakespeare into its influence, and the book goes on to explore the literary gothic, including the earliest practitioners of the art. The book winds up discussing modern horror which, as is generally acknowledged, has its origins in the gothic.
As I note in my blog post about the book (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) the freedom of the gothic was a reaction against the expected conformity of “classical” settings like ancient Rome. The melancholy aspect of gothic suggests there’s more to life than straight lines and smoothly rounded arches. Groom’s book does a service by showing both the breadth of the concept and the bringing together of its common elements so that we can recognize the gothic when we see it.
The Goths, barbarians to Romans, valued freedom. To me this seems to be the heart of the gothic. Groom explores how this came to influence architecture—the gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Concerns with death bring Shakespeare into its influence, and the book goes on to explore the literary gothic, including the earliest practitioners of the art. The book winds up discussing modern horror which, as is generally acknowledged, has its origins in the gothic.
As I note in my blog post about the book (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) the freedom of the gothic was a reaction against the expected conformity of “classical” settings like ancient Rome. The melancholy aspect of gothic suggests there’s more to life than straight lines and smoothly rounded arches. Groom’s book does a service by showing both the breadth of the concept and the bringing together of its common elements so that we can recognize the gothic when we see it.
Read
July 14, 2019It is, as promised, a very short introduction. An entertaining romp through the centuries uniting various strands of history, literature, politics, architecture, film, music and fashion that have in some way come under the heading of "Gothic."
It was very interesting to think about the various and sometimes unexpected ways these things connect. Also, this book makes me realize how ignorant I am of many aspects of history, such as how traumatic the English Reformation really was, and how bloody. Also, how the presence of so many ruins influenced people's thoughts and emotions. This last reminded me of the part in Jane Austen's "History of England" where she talks about Hery VIII:
"Nothing can be said in his vindication, but that his abolishing Religious Houses and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general, which probably was a principal motive for his doing it, since otherwise why should a Man who was of no Religion himself be at so much trouble to abolish one which had for Ages been established in the Kingdom."
It was very interesting to think about the various and sometimes unexpected ways these things connect. Also, this book makes me realize how ignorant I am of many aspects of history, such as how traumatic the English Reformation really was, and how bloody. Also, how the presence of so many ruins influenced people's thoughts and emotions. This last reminded me of the part in Jane Austen's "History of England" where she talks about Hery VIII:
"Nothing can be said in his vindication, but that his abolishing Religious Houses and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general, which probably was a principal motive for his doing it, since otherwise why should a Man who was of no Religion himself be at so much trouble to abolish one which had for Ages been established in the Kingdom."
October 6, 2021
Concisely covers a range of aspects of The Gothic (history, architecture, philosophy, politics, literature, cinema, music), providing many jumping off points to find out more about these aspects. A light read, it is interesting and approachable (and fits in your pocket!).
The greater focus was on The Gothic pre-twentieth century, which was useful for me but may disappoint others depending on what you are hoping to learn.
The greater focus was on The Gothic pre-twentieth century, which was useful for me but may disappoint others depending on what you are hoping to learn.
May 13, 2020
A more academic consideration than 'The Gothic: 250 Years of Success' and covering the origins of the term, the movement itself and the influence on culture and society over the centuries. Highly accessible and invaluable research.
February 25, 2025
Short, thorough, and informative! This was a great broad-stroke look into the world of the Goth and is an excellent initial read for some PD work I'm doing. Detailed and chronological framework that's easy enough to follow (which is impressive, considering how many years and lenses it spans).
January 2, 2026
2.5 stars. It started out strong but I feel like a lot was missed and the end peters out with no clear summary.
June 21, 2024
read for my english lit final presentation ( Bac LLCE Anglais)
March 31, 2024
Excellent overview of the history of the Gothic! This was a refresher for me, but would be a great introduction too.
December 31, 2019
This is a great little survey of things that have been labeled "Gothic" from the gothic tribes to medievalism to architecture to literature to music and style. It traces lines of influence through all these varied things that have been labeled the same. I particularly liked the latter half of the book that dealt with the late 17th century to the modern age, since that is the art that I consume the most.
My favorite quote from the book:
My favorite quote from the book:
An article on "Terrorist Novel Writing" published in 1798, for example, face a recipe for making a Gothic novel:
Take -- An old castle, half of it ruinous.
A long gallery, with a great many doors, some secret ones.
Three murdered bodies, quite fresh.
As many skeletons, in chests and presses.
An old woman hanging by the neck; with her throat cut.
Assassins and desperados 'quant stuff.'
Noise, whispers, and groans, threescore at least.
Mix them together, in the form of three volumes to be taken at any of the watering places, before going to bed.
October 17, 2020
I guess this was...fine? It's a very broad overview of the Gothic from antiquity to the present, and as such it can't really delve into detail, but that wasn't my main issue with it. My problem was that I found the majority of the topics covered kind of boring. That's not the fault of the book (although I will say, the writing is dreadfully dull and academic), and it's doing what it's meant to do, but I personally found myself riveted only by the parts that I was personally interested in (like the bit on vampires, for example, which was far too short). I didn't care much about the things the author seemed to care about, like architecture or the connection between the Gothic and the politics of medieval England. Meanwhile, he gives the development of Gothic literature in the 19th-century a very cursory overview, which was a shame. He also spends a lot of time on literary theory and analysis, when I was looking for something more historical.
September 27, 2017
The book is great when the author sticks to history, but the analytic bits assert interpretations as though they're established fact. For instance, the author tells us that Dracula isn't actually about sex, but rather capitalism. To back this point up he provides a quote supposedly about one of the female vamps taking possession of Harker's body, but it sure sounds to me like a description of sex.
March 5, 2013
A good, comprehensive overview of The Gothic which moves way beyond literature into all aspects of culture. Recommended.
December 6, 2022
Gothicness is the perfect kind of subject for the VSI series because it’s one of those areas about which everybody knows something, and yet knows nothing, really. Goth is [or has been] a people (or some people’s perception of other people,) an architectural style, a literary / cinematic genre, a contemporary lifestyle, and a political motif. Because of this diversity, even people who have a degree of expertise on some aspect of gothicness may have little understanding of other aspects or how these varied forms of gothicness relate (if they do, and – if they don’t -- why enough people believe they relate to have made this well-formed, consensus view of connectedness.)
The downside of this diversity is that this book will almost certainly be dry, verging on tedious, at some point in the reading, depending upon one’s interests. For example, I found the portions on Gothic literature and cinema to be fascinating, but the part that dealt with gothicness in Whig politics to be boring. [With the architecture bit somewhere in between.] That said, one needs to follow this throughline to see how so many varied domains came to be Goth. Also, the book is quite short, so one isn’t likely to be bored to death because there’s not enough space spent on any one topic for that to happen.
I learned a lot about what it means to be “Goth” [or “goth”] from reading this book. It covers the history in some detail, but also brings it around to present-day movies and art. If you seek to know more about what “Gothic” means, you should definitely look into this brief guide.
The downside of this diversity is that this book will almost certainly be dry, verging on tedious, at some point in the reading, depending upon one’s interests. For example, I found the portions on Gothic literature and cinema to be fascinating, but the part that dealt with gothicness in Whig politics to be boring. [With the architecture bit somewhere in between.] That said, one needs to follow this throughline to see how so many varied domains came to be Goth. Also, the book is quite short, so one isn’t likely to be bored to death because there’s not enough space spent on any one topic for that to happen.
I learned a lot about what it means to be “Goth” [or “goth”] from reading this book. It covers the history in some detail, but also brings it around to present-day movies and art. If you seek to know more about what “Gothic” means, you should definitely look into this brief guide.
July 22, 2024
Detto che ho apprezzato altri libri di Nick Groom, e che sono una grande estimatrice delle Very Short Introductions, mi vedo costretta ahimè a dover dire che questo libro ha deluso le mie aspettative.
Credo di poter ragionevolmente assumere che, se un lettore compra un libro dedicato a "The Gothic", sia spinto dall'interesse primario di approfondire - beh - la letteratura gotica. Ecco, no: Groom ha sentito l'esigenza di sintetizzare in 150 pagine tutto lo scibile universale variamente collegabile al termine "gotico", a partire dagli ostrogoti e dai visigoti (no, non sto scherzando), passando attraverso l'architettura gotica, per arrivare solo negli ultimi capitoli a ciò che presumibilmente il lettore s'aspettava di trovare.
Il problema è che ormai aveva finito le pagine a disposizione e quindi ha dovuto condensare in pochi capitoletti argomenti che invece sarebbe stato sicuramente più interessante esporre con più approfondimento. Insomma, non si arriva alla fine del libro con la percezione d'aver ricevuto una buona infarinatura sul tema: anzi. E purtroppo.
Credo di poter ragionevolmente assumere che, se un lettore compra un libro dedicato a "The Gothic", sia spinto dall'interesse primario di approfondire - beh - la letteratura gotica. Ecco, no: Groom ha sentito l'esigenza di sintetizzare in 150 pagine tutto lo scibile universale variamente collegabile al termine "gotico", a partire dagli ostrogoti e dai visigoti (no, non sto scherzando), passando attraverso l'architettura gotica, per arrivare solo negli ultimi capitoli a ciò che presumibilmente il lettore s'aspettava di trovare.
Il problema è che ormai aveva finito le pagine a disposizione e quindi ha dovuto condensare in pochi capitoletti argomenti che invece sarebbe stato sicuramente più interessante esporre con più approfondimento. Insomma, non si arriva alla fine del libro con la percezione d'aver ricevuto una buona infarinatura sul tema: anzi. E purtroppo.
August 14, 2020
This is not one of my favourite entries in the (usually excellent) VSI series. I appreciate that the Gothic is an extremely broad subject that covers a number of domains, including art, architecture, literature, and film, but I found this rather poorly organised and, in places, vague. I was particularly disappointed by the limited space Groom gives to the subject of Gothic literature in the text. Although I recognise that this is a personal gripe, I consider any introduction to the Gothic that fails to discuss such key themes and tropes as madness (particularly in the context of Victorian attitudes to female "hysteria") and the Byronic hero, as well as the important subject of contemporary Gothic literature, to be sorely lacking.
Further, the final chapter is oddly tangential, and ends on an abrupt and rather unacademic note that unfavourably coloured my experience of the whole. I shall have to seek out an alternative introduction to Gothic literature; recommendations are welcome.
Further, the final chapter is oddly tangential, and ends on an abrupt and rather unacademic note that unfavourably coloured my experience of the whole. I shall have to seek out an alternative introduction to Gothic literature; recommendations are welcome.
May 24, 2020
There's plenty of interesting information here. Those who are fans of the gothic in one particular medium (most probably music) and who are interested in the style's history elsewhere might enjoy this. I enjoyed the overviews of architecture and even - very much to my surprise - of Whig politics towards the beginning of this book. Unfortunately, the latter half (which I had been looking forward to the most) plods along, especially when Groom undertakes a history of American horror film that is, at times, only tangentially related to the gothic at best, a list of films and names with no context to connect the dots (the music section suffers from this also). It's ok, but it could have been both better and briefer.
October 25, 2021
I should’ve read this last month or at least at the start of spooky month, but I’m hopping to stick to the gothic kick I’ve been on in October. I learned so much about the gothic, which is why I bought this book. I’ll be referencing back to this book during my gothic reads. I also want to dive more into this subject and I’ll probably be looking into the further reading section for recommendations.
I do have some small complaints. After chapter 10, it felt like the author was trying to cram in as much info as they could. There was so much good information i was being fed in the first 100 pages at a moderate pace. It was rlly overwhelming having ~40 pages left with so much information without the same breathing room. I wish it would’ve been longer, but it’s a short introduction obvi.
I do have some small complaints. After chapter 10, it felt like the author was trying to cram in as much info as they could. There was so much good information i was being fed in the first 100 pages at a moderate pace. It was rlly overwhelming having ~40 pages left with so much information without the same breathing room. I wish it would’ve been longer, but it’s a short introduction obvi.
July 26, 2022
The way this took me sooooo long! I read it for a fellowship that I'm doing for college and the amount of annotations that I did was insane. My copy is a literal work of art.
But the actual book was so chalk-full of information. This is a wonderful history of Gothic architecture, philosophy, literature, and style. Nick Groom did an expert job of explaining the intricacies of the culture and how it's developed from Old English, to Renaissance, to now. I had liked to think of myself as knowledgeable of Gothic culture, specifically Gothic horror, but I was happily mistaken and found so much more useful and interesting information in this book.
Short and sweet, the perfect pocket book of the Gothic!!!
But the actual book was so chalk-full of information. This is a wonderful history of Gothic architecture, philosophy, literature, and style. Nick Groom did an expert job of explaining the intricacies of the culture and how it's developed from Old English, to Renaissance, to now. I had liked to think of myself as knowledgeable of Gothic culture, specifically Gothic horror, but I was happily mistaken and found so much more useful and interesting information in this book.
Short and sweet, the perfect pocket book of the Gothic!!!
September 3, 2023
Groom's introductions to Walpole, Shelley, and Lewis are amazing. He is a supremely clear and careful writer, and his prose is always illuminating and extremely well-researched. My 4.5 (rounded up) here is likely to do with my own biases toward literature, but Groom's wide-ranging survey is full of history, politics, and architecture alongside film, music, and of course, literature. While I was a bit disappointed not to see more of Groom's excellent literary criticism, he writes such a cogent, compelling and "very short" introduction of the historical/political/cultural phenomenon of the Gothic, the book delivers on its promise and worked to (flying;))buttress my knowledge of the overall phenomena of the Gothic.
March 9, 2018
A solid introduction to the genre, but the content was extremely dry. I personally disagreed with...most of the Groom's literary analysis. To say that Carmilla and Dracula have little to do with sex and are actually about consumerism (this was presented as an assertion rather than an opinion, which was where I drew the line) was a bit astounding to me. The last few paragraphs were a little weird, too. The historical back drop this provides for the Gothic is important, but if it weren't for my thesis I wouldn't have picked it up.
February 29, 2020
It's a fascinating little book that breaks down the origins, evolution and influence of the Gothic into easily digestible chunks. Groom looks at politics and national identity, architecture, film, literature and mythology. I'll admit I did pick it up mostly for the literature part but I found the sections on how the Gothic inspired GB's idea of its constitution interesting. Groom's style is incredibly academic (I don't particularly mind that) but there's a section at the very end of the last chapter where you see something different and it surprised me in a good way.
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