This is the first full-length study to examine the links between high Romantic literature and what has often been thought of as a merely popular genre--the Gothic. Michael Gamer analyzes how and why Romantic writers drew on Gothic conventions while, at the same time, denying their influence in order to claim critical respectability. He shows how the reception of Gothic literature played a fundamental role in the development of Romanticism as an ideology, tracing the politics of reading, writing and reception at the end of the eighteenth century.

Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; A note on the text; Introduction: Romanticism's 'pageantry of fear'; 1. Gothic, reception and production; 2. Gothic and its contexts; 3. 'Gross and violent stimulants': producing Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800; 4. National supernaturalism: Joanna Baillie, Germany, and the Gothic drama; 5. 'To foist thy stale romance': Scott, antiquarianism, and authorship; Notes; Index.