HOW GOTHIC BEGAN AND WHAT IT UNLEASHED!

This set of handouts, illustrations, websites and spooky photos of ‘Strawberry Hill House’ includes an editable Word Document. Together, they tell the story of how the Gothic Novel began - and how its author, Horace Walpole, unleashed a host of strange, entertainingly frightening and imaginative elements into the English Novel! Students can read the handout with its illustrations, then lose themselves in the photos of the House in its many moods. These could then inspire their own Gothic stories.

Students could even decorate the classroom - or part of it - to make it more Gothic, just as Walpole did with his ‘little Gothic castle’. The handout starts with a list of Gothic elements. The drawing ‘WALPOLE LET THEM IN’ does not label the strange creatures. So get students to discuss their own ideas of what they all are, what’s happening, and what the images remind them of in popular culture today!

The final document is a list of four useful Gothic websites for further research.

The drawings may also be helpful with students who might otherwise find this quite a disturbing topic. I don’t think my zombie would scare anybody.
SEE ALSO ‘UNUSUAL FRIENDSHIPS IN CASTLE SPOOKY’ - CREATIVE WRITING.