Edith BirkheadCritiques

The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance by Edith Birkhead is considered to be an important work on Gothic literature. Edith Birkhead was a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol and a Noble Fellow at the University of Liverpool.

This book, published in 1921, follows the development of the trend of writing Gothic stories, books of “horrid tales” or “tales of terror”. The book starts with Walpole's The Castle of Otronto (1764) and ends with a discussion on the Tales of Terror by American authors.

The book is divided in to twelve different chapters. I found the following discussions interesting, The Beginnings of Gothic Romance (Chapter 2 ), The Novel of Suspense: Mrs. Radcliffe (Chapter 3 ), The Oriental Tale of Terror: Beckford (Chapter 5 ), Satires on the Novel of Terror (Chapter 7 ) and American Tales of Terror (Chapter 11 ).

Birkhead obviously loved Gothic fiction. I presume she had read almost all of the books she speaks of in here. It seems as if she tried to cram in the summary and criticism of all of the books she had read in to this one book. The work is a bit too extensive. Each and every passage of each and every chapter is filled with so many references that I had a very hard time keeping up with it all.

Having said all that the book is rather informative. Although at times I felt overwhelmed by the barrage of information, it did help add quite a few new books to my TBR pile.

In all, this is a pretty comprehensive study on the beginning and progress of the Gothic Romance and also on the growth of supernatural fiction in English literature. I think, the lovers of classic books especially the admirers of the Gothic genre will quite enjoy reading it.

A good overview of Gothic fiction, if a little long in places.½