In the twentieth century the Titus Trilogy of Mervyn Peake is a major example of Gothic fiction. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the tales of Edgar Allan Poe incorporate many Gothic elements, as does much of the popular fiction - including many of the so-called "penny dreadfuls" - of the nineteenth century. Among the key writers in the genre was Ann Radcliffe. Jane Austen made affectionate fun of them in Northanger Abbey, as did Thomas Love Peacock in Nightmare Abbey. Other writers jumped on the Gothic bandwagon, and Gothic novels stayed very popular well into the nineteenth century. Gothic fiction is thus a part of the wider movement of romanticism in literature and the arts, and of the reaction of the more measured "classical" style which had dominated literature in the first half of the eighteenth century. ![]() The novel quickly created a new fashion in novel-writing, in which a large element consisted on playing on the emotions of the reader. Set in the thirteenth century, this tale involves princes, a castle, murder and a ghost, and purported - a common Gothic convention - to be a translation from an Italian original. ![]() ![]() One can trace elements of the Gothic novel in earlier novels such as Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett, published in 1753 but the first full-fledged Gothic novel was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, which appeared in 1764.
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