This book examines Southern Gothic - a term that describes some of the finest works of the American Imagination. But what do Southern and Gothic mean, and how are they related? Traditionally seen as drawing on the tragedy of slavery and loss, Southern Gothic is now a richer, more complex subject. Thirty-five distinguished scholars explore the Southern Gothic, under the categories of Poe and his Legacy; Space and Place; Race; Gender and Sexuality; and Monsters and Voodoo.  The essays examine slavery and the laws that supported it, and stories of slaves who rebelled and those who escaped. Also present are the often-neglected issues of the Native American presence in the South, socioeconomic class, the distinctions among the several regions of the South, same-sex relationships, and norms of gendered behaviour. This handbook covers not only iconic figures of Southern literature but also other less well-known writers, and examines gothic imageryin film and in contemporary television programmes such asTrue Blood andTrue Detective.

Susan Castillo Street is Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emerita, Kings College London, UK. She has published extensively on writing of the Early Americas, Native American writing, nineteenth-century American literature, and the Southern Gothic. She is also a published poet and literary translator.
Charles L. Crow is Professor Emeritus of English at Bowling Green State University, USA. His publications includeA Companion to the Regional Literatures of America(2003),American Gothic (2009),American Gothic: An Anthology From Salem Witchcraft to H. P. Lovecraft (2012), andA Companion to American Gothic(2013).

Acknowledgments.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction.- PART I: EDGAR ALLAN POE AND HIS LEGACY.- 1. Edgar Allan Poe and the Southern Gothic; Tom F. Wright.- 2. Inside the Dark House: William Faulkner,Absalom, Absalom! and Southern Gothic; Richard Gray.- 3. Dreamland: Antebellum Southern Women Poets and Poe; Paula Bernat Bennett.- 4. Southern Gothic: Haunted Houses; Carol Margaret Davison.- 5. The Globalisation of the Gothic South; Edward Sugden.- PART II: SPACE AND PLACE IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC.- 6. Gothic Landscapes of the South; Matthew Wynn Sivils.- 7. Southern Hauntings: Kate Chopin's Fiction; Janet Beer and Avril Horner.- 8. Gothic Appalachia; Sarah Robertson.- 9. New Immigration and the Southern Gothic; Nahem Yousaf.- 10. Flannery O'Connor and the Realism of Distance; Éric Savoy.- 11. Florida Gothic: Shadows in the Sunshine State; Bev Hogue.- 12. Gothic Cuba andthe Trans-American South; Ivonne M. Garcia.- 13. A Long View of History: Cormac McCarthy's Gothic Vision; Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr..- 14. New Orleans as Gothic Capital; Sherry R. Truffin.- 15. George Washington Cable and Grace King; Owen Robinson.- 16. Francophone Gothic Melodramas; Bill Marshall.- PART III: RACE AND SOUTHERN GOTHIC.- 17. Uncanny Plantations: The Repeating Gothic; Michael Kreyling.- 18. Slave Narratives and Slave Revolts; Maisha Wester.- 19. The Tragic Mulatto and Passing; Emily Clark.- 20. Law and the Gothic in the Slaveholding South; Ellen Weinauer.- 21. Charles Chesnutt's Reparative Gothic; Christine A. Wooley.- 22. Jim Crow Gothic: Richard Wright's Southern Nightmare; Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet.- 23. The Turn from the Gothic to Southern Liberalism inTo Kill a Mockingbird; Michael L. Manson.- 24. Raising the Indigenous Undead; Eric Gary Anderson.- PART IV: GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC TEXTS.- 25. Twisted Sisters: The Monstrous Women of Southern Gothic; Kellie Donovan-Condron.- 26. Ellen Glasgow's Gothic Heroes and Monsters; Mark Graves.- 27. The Gothic and the Grotesque in the Novels of Carson McCullers; Dara Downey.- 28. 'The room must evoke some ghosts': Tennessee Williams; Stephen Matterson.- 29. Truman Capotes Gothic Politics; Michael P. Bibler.- PART V: MONSTERS, VAMPIRES AND VOODOO.- 30. Southern Vampires: Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris andTrue Blood; Ken Gelder.- 31. Voodoo and Conjure as Gothic Realism; Anne Schroder.- 32. 'Nothing So Mundane as Ghosts': Eudora Welty and the Gothic; Sarah Ford.- 33. Talismans of Shadows and Mantles of Light: Contemporary Forms of the Southern Female Gothic; Peggy Dunn Bailey.- 34. Shadows on the Small Screen: The Televisuality and Generic Hybridity of Southern Gothic; Brigid Cherry.- 35. The Southern Gothic in Film: An Overview; David Greven.- Index.-