Dorothy Scarborough - The Supernatural In Modern English Fiction: (1/2) Modern Ghosts

Описание: THE SUPERNATURAL IN MODERN ENGLISH FICTION.....
Scholar of the macabre Dorothy Scarborough provides us with the first comprehensive overview of supernatural fiction in literary history, a book originally written as her dissertation for her Ph.D. at Columbia University and later so universally praised that it was published widely in print. From the early gothic romances of Walpole and Maturin to the more "modern" (as of the writing of this book in 1917) work of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw", Scarborough explores the many facets of supernatural fiction and provides insights into why ghosts, ghouls, witches, werewolves and other weird beings that go bump in the night have provided humanity with such long-lasting and expansive fascination throughout the ages.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY.....
Emily Dorothy Scarborough (January 27, 1878 – November 7, 1935) was an American writer who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton farming, ghost stories and women's life in the Southwest.
Scarborough was born in Mount Carmel, Texas. At the age of four she moved to Sweetwater, Texas for her mother's health, as her mother needed the drier climate. The family soon left Sweetwater in 1887, so that the Scarborough children could get a good education at Baylor College. Even though Scarborough's writings are identified with Texas, she studied at University of Chicago and Oxford University and, beginning in 1916, taught literature at Columbia University.

While receiving her PhD from Columbia, she wrote a dissertation, "The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction". Sylvia Ann Grider writes in a critical introduction that the dissertation "was so widely acclaimed by her professors and colleagues that it was published and it has become a basic reference work". Dorothy Scarborough came in contact with many writers in New York, including Edna Ferber and Vachel Lindsay. She taught creative writing classes at Columbia. Among her creative writing students were Eric Walrond and Carson McCullers, who took her first college writing class from Scarborough. Her most critically acclaimed book, The Wind (first published anonymously in 1925), was later made into a film of the same name starring Lillian Gish.

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