ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the mid-century popular Gothic romance, its origins, and critics. Beginning with the literary Gothic in the eighteenth century, it outlines its history and conventions. It argues that the Gothic is a hybrid genre that toggles between the conservative and the radical, the supernatural and the natural, and that this hybridity is retained in the mid-century Gothic romance, which uses the conventions to explore women’s heterosexual experiences within an often violent and uncertain domestic space. Along with examining the scholarly record on Gothic romance, the chapter suggests gaps in that record and some avenues for further research.
