Yorkshire in the Gothic Imagination: Yorkshire Gothic from 1847 to the present

This thesis will consider the emergence and continuing popularity of what I term ‘Yorkshire Gothic’, a strand of Gothic writing which adapts some of the conventions of the Gothic tradition to Yorkshire settings. It divides up the geography of Yorkshire into three different kinds of space – rural, coastal, and urban – and it analyses two key texts under each heading. In the rural chapter, I will think about how Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Ross Raisin’s God’s Own County (2008) draw inspiration from and Gothicize the setting of the Yorkshire Moors. In the coastal chapter, I will consider the role played by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) in establishing Whitby’s Gothic legacy, and the ways in which Robin Jarvis’s The Whitby Witches (1991) draws upon, and adds to, this rich folkloric culture. Finally, in the city chapter I will think about two collections of short ghost stories: The Ghosts of York (1899), compiled by local historian William Camidge, and The Ghost Walk of York (1984), which differently present Gothic supernaturalism to their readers. Throughout these individual chapters, I will bring the later text into dialogue with the earlier, in the process thinking about how this reflection on precursor texts helps to create the ‘Yorkshire Gothic’ that is the object of my enquiry.