ABSTRACT
The number of Gothic novels written from the 1790s to the 1820s was colossal. The minor fiction of the period is characterised by a number of oft-repeated themes, present in Lathom and in many others. The pact with the devil, the liability of convents to become infested with demoniac rites, the shocking effect of the corruption and death of beauty, the debilitating results of the longing for revenge: all of these provide structural elements for a wide range of novels and magazine stories. If one looks at Gothic in these terms, that is, if one attempts to describe the parameters of Gothic in terms of its specific formal differences from other novelistic acceptances of the time, and in terms of the particular kind of preoccupation with terror which it embodies, three works stand out, and have done in the history of criticism. William Godwin's "Caleb Williams", Charles Robert Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer", and James Hogg's "Confessions of a Justified Sinner".
