CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.

The antiquity of the tale of terror; the element of fear in myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels." Pp. 1-15.

CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.

Walpole's admiration for Gothic art and his interest in the middle ages; the mediaeval revival at the close of the eighteenth century; _The Castle of Otranto_; Walpole's bequest to later romance-writers; Smollett's incidental anticipation of the methods of Gothic Romance; Clara Reeve's _Old English Baron_ and her effort to bring her story "within the utmost verge of probability"; Mrs. Barbauld's Gothic fragment; Blake's _Fair Elenor_; the critical theories and Gothic experiments of Dr. Nathan Drake. Pp. 16-37.