Bristol's Hidden Gothic History: A Female Literary Heritage

Description

In many ways, Bristol is a Gothic city, not just architecturally and through its involvement with the slave trade but also in regard to its literary heritage. Some of our most important women writers who wrote in the Gothic mode were inspired by Bristol including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Angela Carter.

Professor Marie Mulvey-Roberts will trace this hidden history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and will raise the question of memorialisation, particularly 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 in her writing but also by its music. As a tribute to Angela Carter, who died 30 years ago this year, Professor Mulvey-Roberts will conclude her inaugural lecture with a musical performance drawing on her experience as a volunteer pianist at Southmead Hospital.

She is the author and editor of around 30 books including Dangerous Bodies, winner of the Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize. This year sees the launch of her new Bloomsbury Studies in Global Women's Writing book series, the first title of which is on Angela Carter and music, by Polly Paulusma, and next year will be the 30th anniversary of Women's Writing, a journal she co-founded on women writers before 1900.

She invites you to join her in this celebration event, sponsored by UWE Bristol (Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education) and supported by the Centre for Music, UWE and Bookhaus Bristol, which will be followed by a sparkling wine reception.