Current PhD Students

Hayley Braithwaite

Title:

Excavating the City: The Gothic Impulses of George W. M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London/The Mysteries of the Court of London

Supervisors:

Dr Alison O'Byrne & Dr Deborah Russell

Description:

My doctoral research examines the gothic impulses of nineteenth-century London as depicted within George W. M. Reynolds’s bestselling penny serial The Mysteries of London/The Mysteries of the Court of London (1844-1856). The first sustained analysis of Reynolds’s innovative use of the gothic within The Mysteries series, my research traces how Reynolds exposes the contemporary city’s institutions and practices as inherently gothic. Used primarily as a tool of political critique, the gothic tropes employed by Reynolds are not presented as reimagined relics of an earlier literary tradition, but rather as having been generated by the realities of modern London. Through my research I aim, thus, to shed new light on Reynolds’s distinctive blend of manifesto, reportage, and melodrama; reconsider the penny serial’s role in the development of nineteenth-century gothic fiction; and examine Reynolds’s ability to respond to, and shape, reader’s anxieties about the rapidly transforming city.

More generally, my research interests include: Romantic and Victorian-era gothic literature, radical print culture, penny fiction, and the Victorian City.