The Gothic is more than just maidens-in-peril fleeing supernatural villains in another age. Historically, it was a form used to depict and critique the dangerous labour conditions faced by workers during the Industrial Revolution.

Bridget M. Marshall is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and the author of Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature, also published by the University of Wales Press.