Victorian Hauntings

'Taking the familiar genre of the Gothic as a point of departure and revisiting it through Derridean theory, Wolfreys' book, the first application of hauntology to the domain of Victorian Studies is a remarkable achievement. Wolfreys never reduces reading to instrumentality but remains alert to all the potentialities of the texts he reads with a great attention to their idiosyncrasies. Victorian Hauntings should bring a new tone to Victorian Studies, this clever book is quite perfect. - Jean Michel Rabate, Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania 'You'd have to be dead to know more about ghosts than Julian Wolfreys.' Martin McQuillan, University of Leeds '...illumination of this unusual subject.' - Times Literary Supplement 'Victorian Hauntings addresses and creatively extends Derrida's recent writings on spectrality. Addressing the considerable existing scholarship on the Gothic, Wolfreys offers a tour de force reading. In each elegantly reasoned chapter, Wolfreys achieves significant new readings of important works while simultaneously elaborating an original and highly complex overarching theoretical definition of spectrality. He does this with the clarity that is the trademark of his work.' - Donald Ault, Professor of Romantic Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Florida 'Julian Wolfreys' Victorian Hauntings could be called the finest book on Victorian Gothic, if it were not so much more as well. It is also a subtle and highly provocative exploration of the uncanny, of our draw toward the spectral, all that threatens and promises to engulf us.' - James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California