Tue 30 Aug 2016
GOTHICS WITH GENUINE FANTASY ELEMENTS.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists[2] Comments
Vintage paperback bibliographer extraordinaire Kenneth R. Johnson has just announced the completion of his latest project “Gothics with Genuine Fantasy Elements.” You can find it online here.
Back in the 1960s and 70 “gothic romances” were so popular that they formed their own publishing category. Hundreds if not a thousand or more titles were published, before interest in them by the reading public (mostly female) finally began to fade, and historical romances of the “bodice ripper” variety took over.
Most of the gothics that were published could also have been categorized as “romantic suspense,” but elements of fantasy and the supernatural were often hinted at. On occasion the hints were more than that, and a number of books included out and out elements of witchcraft, psychic magic, vampirism and so on.
This is where Ken’s annotated — and illustrated! — checklist comes in. It has to have been quite a job: finding the books, determining first of all of they were actually published as gothics, and then reading them sufficiently enough to determine whether the fantasy element were real or not.
Not surprisingly there is a separate section of the checklist called “marginal titles.” A lot of boundaries are blurred whenever you’re trying to decide whether a book falls into a particular category or not, and for this particular project the problem is coming at you from all sides.
It’s a job well done, and if you”re at all interested, I definitely recommend that you go take a look.
August 30th, 2016 at 5:39 pm
Some of my favorite books fit this category including Dorothy MacArdle’s DARK FREEHOLD (THE UNIVITED) and at least three of Barbara Mertz’s Barbara Michaels novels. There is much of the Gothic in Basil Copper’s novels as well as Dennis Wheatley’s supernatural novels and some of Russell Kirk’s work. Gothic atmosphere also pervades William Sloane’s best known novels like EDGE OF RUNNING WATER, though of these perhaps only MacArdle’s and Michaels books are true Gothic the modern sense.
I suspect many of my favorites would be marginal at best since most weren’t published as Gothics, though at least one edition of CONJURE WIFE was published with a very Gothic style cover.
August 30th, 2016 at 7:22 pm
Sometimes but not as often as one might think, Gothic novels and publishing category of “gothic romances” were one and the same thing.
In his introduction to his checklist Ken explains that his list consists of those books which were identified published as gothics, but including some because their covers look like gothics.
Sloane’s book, then, is not included, but Macardle’s books are, simply because at one time or another their publishers packaged them as gothics.
I’m sure I know the cover of Leiber’s CONJURE WIFE you’re referring to, and yes, it makes it look like a gothic, but I’ve checked, and apparently Ken didn’t think the connection was quite enough to even call it marginal.