Representations of Terror and Horror in the Frontispieces to Thomas and Robert Hughes’s Gothic Chapbooks

Abstract

ABSTRACT Chapbooks are versatile print media that, more than any other print form, made available a wide variety of texts intended for popular reading to a broad and diverse readership. Gothic chapbooks or bluebooks, in particular, occupied an intermediary position between expensive editions of belles lettres and cheaply produced ballads and other literary ephemera. Adapting and appropriating genre conventions and narrative strategies, they both capitalised on and further contributed to the popularity of the Gothic genre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. To date, however, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the frontispiece illustrations included in these chapbooks. This article examines the frontispieces to the Gothic bluebooks issued by Thomas and Robert Hughes in 1807 and 1808. Exploring the multifunctionality of the illustrations, it explores the ways in which they developed visual interpretations of Gothic horror and terror, generated metageneric reflections, and participated in a visual culture shared across different media networks. Functioning as a critical access point for readers, the frontispieces represented an integral part of the paratextual framing of the bluebook texts, generating meaning and affecting the Gothic reading experience.