Over the centuries the Gothic has been revived and rewritten to reflect the anxieties of each era. It encompasses the weird, the feared and the uncanny; haunted places and people; and monsters that act as mirrors to ourselves and society. In this lavishly illustrated volume Roger Luckhurst explores how the Gothic began in the margins of history and seeped into mainstream global culture today.

The visceral visual history begins with the Gothic as an aesthetic and architectural practice - the revival of medieval arches across northern Europe - and the emergence of Gothic...