In The Foresters, Elizabeth Gunning offers an entertaining romp through the many tropes of Gothic literature, including clandestine marriages; tyrannous fathers; encounters with banditti; mysterious crypts; strange ceremonies conducted at midnight; sublime scenery; a spectre (or two); and inexplicable disembodied voices – to name but a few. Gunning employs all of these devices to create a compelling story combining the wildest elements of fiction with her own personal history and experience within eighteenth-century society, producing both a social document and an entertaining read....