‘The Surrealist Novel and the Gothic’ by Neil Matheson is published in Anna Watz (ed), The Surrealist Novel, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

This book chapter, ‘The Surrealist Novel and the Gothic’, is a contribution to A History of the Surrealist Novel, a new critical collection on surrealism’s conflicted relationship with the novel format, edited by Anna Watz. The book provides a more international perspective on the surrealist movement, while challenging the masculine bias of previous accounts. The chapter on the Gothic novel provides a new critical reading of the work of three women writers: Ithell Colquhoun’s alchemical-erotic Goose of Hermogenes (1961), Valentine Penrose’s Erzsébet Báthory: La comtesse sanglante (1962), a poetic-imaginative reinterpretation of deeply disturbing historic events, and Joyce Mansour’s incendiary novel Les gisants satisfaits (1958).