Description: Tracing the use of legal themes in the gothic novel, Bridget M. Marshall shows novelists like William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Charles Brockden Brown, and Hannah Crafts questioning the foundations of the Anglo-American justice system. Often invoking actual laws like the Black Act in England or the Fugitive Slave Act in America, gothic novels connect the genre's fantastic horrors with much more shocking examples of terror and injustice like American slavery.
Review Quotes: 'Marshall's study deserves to be read by aficionados as wells as new-comers to the genre of the Gothic. Her transnational exploration can serve as an important pointer towards future innovative studies in the field of Gothic criticism.' Zeitschrift fÃ1/4r Anglistik und Amerikanistik