Gothic: Four hundred years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin - Hardcover

‘Gothic’ is Richard Davenport-Hines magisterial study of the gothic imagination from vampire novels to the modern day landscape of Bladerunner.

Gothic traces the evolution of the meaning of ‘gothic’ in the artistic imagination. Gothic has never been an artistic movement built on clearly formulated principles rather it has always been the expression of the darker recesses of the human imagination. In this fascinating history Richard Davenport-Hines investigates the recurring obsessions of the gothic, the stepping away from the everyday with its guarantees and limits into the region of the immoderate and powerful.

From the haunting pictures of 17th century Naples to Vampire night clubs in present day New York, Gothic is a history of the passions which overpower reason and of the images of these struggles produced by painters, gardeners, architects, poets, novelists, film-makers and fashion designers.

Richard Davenport-Hines is the author of an acclaimed biography of W H Auden, a biography of the Macmillan dynasty and Sex, Death and Punishment: Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain Since the Renaissance.