The Manuscript Found in Saragossa – an arabesque frame narrative that is defined by its vivid descriptions, paradoxical juxtapositions, and vast collection of character types, all contained within an elaborately structured 66-day plot. The many tales that constitute it form a mélange of adventure, legend, and myth; a world filled with kabbalists, thieves, magicians, succubae, gypsies, The Wandering Jew, shape-shifters, the un-dead, beautiful women - all embedded in a world teeming with conspiracy.

Paulina Palmer’s The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2012) was, quite simply, necessary.

Clock Tower is a story of orphans, isolation, sordid family secrets and sprawling Norwegian castles, as such, all the critical elements for a piece of classic gothic story-telling.

The first part of the interview with Panos Pilatos, as well as a short biography, you can read here.

A little christmas treat for you all this year. My friend Simon Lloyd writes his own zombie blog and has written his own version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'.  It's the perfect way for a dedicated goth to bring in christmas, so, here you are: ‘T was the night before Christmas, When all through the house Not a creature was stirring Except a small mouse - Now this was quite odd As a matter of fact It had been killed earlier By a black and white cat - But out in the graveyard Strange noises were heard The undead were rising, Fresh flesh the

As group of friends we took a trip to The Edinburgh Dungeons, a place set on making sure history really comes alive—but only the fun, dark, gory parts.

As a companion study to his own monograph Stephen King on the Big Screen (2009), in which Mark Browning discusses theatrically released movies formulated around a King-based premise, Stephen King on the Small Screen (2011) now deals with television-oriented productions based on material by King. A brief introductory review of the major works on the topic up to the date of publication demonstrates that this is indeed a much neglected area. King adaptations in television are mostly mentioned in passing, if at all, even in those works proclaiming to analyse a wide range of material. Browning thus provides a platform for King’s television pieces to be discussed in their own right and outside of potentially restricting or distorting theoretical frameworks...

It is doubtless that today’s Gothic fashion sells and sells in a particularly Gothic fashion. The Pop-Gothic culture reflected in the clothes – where the cute is made morbid and the morbid made cute, exemplified by many a headless Hello Kitty – serves to parody late twentieth-century sub-cultural manifestations of Gothic’s manufactured morbidity, its over-reliance upon interpretations of the Gothic as a source of gloom and as a style or social practice suitable for teenage transformation.

To add to Dale's post about Poe resources, if you are working on Poe there's also the Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection at the Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas, Austin. There is also the Poe Project, which aims to provide new ways to think about and interact with Poe - this is mainly, I think for teachers of school children, but the Digital collection is very useful. Here's a sample, pages from a parody of Poe's 'The Raven' called 'The Vulture: An Ornithological Study', taken from Graham's Magazine of 1853:

There's quite a few books of interest recently published or forthcoming, so look out for Part 2 coming soon