TERROR & WONDER:

TERROR & WONDER: 

The Gothic Imagination

Two hundred rare objects trace 250 years of the Gothic tradition, exploring our enduring fascination with the mysterious, the terrifying & the macabre (Oct 2014 - Jan 2015)

This fascinating exhibition at the British Library, London, was almost everything one could desire from an exhibition about Gothic Horror. For me it certainly made up for not having had the opportunity to visit Paris last year for "L'Ange du Bizarre" (and for failing to find the catalogue at an affordable price!). Here in all its glory was the story of Gothic literature in a place dedicated to books old and new, and in a space perfectly designed for the subject, with make-believe gothic doorways, windows, draught blown curtains, black painted showcases and video screens drawing you through darkened rooms in the expectation of great movie moments (such as Bride of Frankenstein), TV Gothic and other sounds and trappings of several hundred years of Terror and Wonder...

There were enough rarities here, spotlit behind glass, to satisfy the curiosity of anyone even remotely interested in the origins of our favourite monsters and literary terrors. What a shame though, that the show petered out towards the end with a collection of lack-lustre photos taken in Whitby, plus a few other odds and ends, in an overlit space, hardly welcome after the darkness of the preceding galleries.

"Celebrating how British writers have pioneered the genre, Terror and Wonder takes the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, and exhibits treasures from the Library’s collections to carry the story forwards to the present day. Eminent authors over the last 250 years, including William Blake, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, MR James, Mervyn Peake, Angela Carter and Neil Gaiman, underpin the exhibition’s exploration of how Gothic fiction has evolved and influenced film, fashion, music, art and the Goth subculture."

Lead curator of the exhibition, Tim Pye, stated: “Gothic is one the most popular and influential modes of literature and I’m delighted that Terror and Wonder is celebrating its rich 250 year history. The exhibition features an amazingly wide range of material, from stunningly beautiful medieval artifacts to vinyl records from the early Goth music scene, so there is truly something for everyone”.