Inaugural Professorial Lecture

BRISTOL’S HIDDEN GOTHIC HISTORY: A FEMALE LITERARY HERITAGE

This lecture is followed by a musical compilation of Marie’s playing (1.10.10). For Music Programme Notes click on page numbers (pages 1-2 and pages 3-4)

Bristol can be seen as a Gothic city, not just architecturally and through its involvement with the slave trade but also owing to its literary heritage. Marie argues that several of our most important women writers who wrote in the Gothic mode, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Angela Carter, were inspired by Bristol. She traces this hidden history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and, in raising the question of memorialisation, asks why women have traditionally been the recipients of fewer commemorative plaques than men.  Earlier this year, in a sign of the changing times, a plaque was erected on the house where Angela Carter lived in Clifton.  Carter was not only inspired by the topography and Bohemian culture of the city but also by its music. To commemorate Angela Carter’s 30th anniversary, Marie concludes her inaugural lecture with a musical tribute.