<p> This collection of 13 essays examines the work of Victorian authors Wilkie Collins M.E. Braddon Letitia Elizabeth Landon Mary Wollstonecraft J. Sheridan Le Fanu Bram Stoker Charles Dickens Robert Louis Stevenson Elizabeth Gaskell Henry James and Charlotte Bronte. Each essay explores their use of archetypal Gothic elements such as dark secrets and forbidden sensations to depict nineteenth-century attitudes to class gender race colonialism and imperialism.</p>