Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature

An archival literary study positing the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror.

Stories about the real horrors of factory life frequently employed the mode of the Gothic, while nineteenth-century Gothic literature began to use new settings-factories, mills, and industrial cities-as backdrops for the horrors that once populated Gothic castles. This study carves out the Industrial Gothic as a new area of study that places the literature of the Industrial Revolution in dialogue with the Gothic. The book explores a significant subset of transatlantic nineteenth-century literature that employs the tropes, themes, and rhetoric of the Gothic to portray the real-life horrors of factory life. Using archival materials, Bridget Marshall frames the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror.