1. In deference to (and full agreement with) an argument cogently presented by Maurice Lévy some years ago (` "Gothic" and the Critical Idiom', in Allan Lloyd Smith and Victor Sage, (eds), Gothic Origins and Innovations [Amsterdam: Rodopi,1994], pp.1-15), I will venture to make an unfashionable distinction between the `modal' and the historical senses of the word `Gothic'. In a functional sense, as signalling a mode or strain of writing, Gothic or Gothic-derived elements may be said to permeate much Western literature written over the last two-and-a-half centuries.Inits categorial sense, identifying a historical genre, `Gothic' is best taken to designate a body of horror texts published between the approximate dates of 1764 and 1830; this second sense (the sense in which I will use the term) requires us to designate other writings (including later manifestations of horror literature) as separate, if related, genres.