Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Outputs (25)

Arctic Ghosts: Whale Hunting and Haunting in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 'The Captain of the Pole-Star' (2022)
Journal Article
Alder, E. (2022). Arctic Ghosts: Whale Hunting and Haunting in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 'The Captain of the Pole-Star'. Victorian Studies, 65(1), 43-66

Over-hunting in Arctic seas drove bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) nearly to extinction by the end of the nineteenth century. Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’” (1883), inspired by his youthful 1880 voyage on the Scottish whalin... Read More about Arctic Ghosts: Whale Hunting and Haunting in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 'The Captain of the Pole-Star'.

Time and the Terrors of the Shoreline in Dunsany and Wells (2022)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Alder, E. (2022, July). Time and the Terrors of the Shoreline in Dunsany and Wells. Paper presented at Gothic Interruptions: 16th Biennial Conference of the International Gothic Association, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

The shoreline is a popular stage for the end of the world in fin-de-siècle fiction – it is upon a shore that H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller witnesses the final remnant of animal life, William Hope Hodgson’s Recluse discovers the meaning of eternity, an... Read More about Time and the Terrors of the Shoreline in Dunsany and Wells.

Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles (2022)
Book
Alder, E., Packham, J., & Passey, J. (Eds.). (2022). Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles. London: British Library

From foreboding cliffs and lonely lighthouses to rumbling shingles and silted estuaries, the coasts of the British Isles have stoked the imaginations of storytellers for millennia, lending a rich literary significance to these spaces between land and... Read More about Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles.

Creatures of Moonshine: H. G. Wells’s ‘The Sea Raiders’ and the Oceanic Romance (2022)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Alder, E. (2022, April). Creatures of Moonshine: H. G. Wells’s ‘The Sea Raiders’ and the Oceanic Romance. Paper presented at BSLS 2022 Annual Conference, Manchester

There is a strand of nineteenth-century fiction interested in tentacled monsters based to a greater or lesser extent on cephalopods. Although the legendary kraken remained a legend, biology had learned a little about the real existence of giant squid... Read More about Creatures of Moonshine: H. G. Wells’s ‘The Sea Raiders’ and the Oceanic Romance.

“A Thing Of Dreams And Desires, A Siren, A Whisper, And A Seduction”: Mermaids and the seashore in H. G. Wells’s The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine (2021)
Journal Article
Alder, E. (2021). “A Thing Of Dreams And Desires, A Siren, A Whisper, And A Seduction”: Mermaids and the seashore in H. G. Wells’s The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine. Shima, 15(2), 85-100. https://doi.org/10.21463/shima.142

The Sea Lady (1901) is one of the more neglected early novels of H. G. Wells, particularly compared to his more famous scientific romances. Both a social satire and a mediation on the limits of human imagination, Wells’s only mermaid story has drawn... Read More about “A Thing Of Dreams And Desires, A Siren, A Whisper, And A Seduction”: Mermaids and the seashore in H. G. Wells’s The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine.

Spectres in the Arctic: Whales and Arthur Conan Doyle (2021)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Alder, E. (2021, July). Spectres in the Arctic: Whales and Arthur Conan Doyle. Paper presented at Dark Economies, University of Falmouth

Whales have long held powerful symbolic places in the art, writing, and folklore of coastal and sea-going cultures globally. Under the expansion of industrialised whaling in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, however, both the whales and their me... Read More about Spectres in the Arctic: Whales and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Foreword by Dr. Emily Adler (2020)
Book Chapter
Alder, E. (2020). Foreword by Dr. Emily Adler. In Footsteps in the Dark: Short Stories, Anthology of New & Classic Tales (8-9). London: Flame Tree Publishing

Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siecle (2020)
Book
Alder, E. (2020). Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siecle. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32652-4

This book explores how nineteenth-century science stimulated the emergence of weird tales at the fin de siècle, and examines weird fiction by British writers who preceded and influenced H. P. Lovecraft, the most famous author of weird fiction. From l... Read More about Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siecle.

Weird Sisters: Victorian women’s ghost stories and a new look at the weird tale (2019)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Alder, E. (2019, August). Weird Sisters: Victorian women’s ghost stories and a new look at the weird tale. Paper presented at Victorian Renewals: British Association of Victorian Studies Conference 2019, University of Dundee

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, weird fiction looks like a masculine tradition. While there are numerous women among recent ‘New Weird’ writers, female authorship of early weird tales barely shows up next to the success of H. P.... Read More about Weird Sisters: Victorian women’s ghost stories and a new look at the weird tale.

Our Progeny’s Monsters: Frankenstein Retold for Children in Picturebooks and Graphic Novels (2018)
Book Chapter
Alder, E. (2018). Our Progeny’s Monsters: Frankenstein Retold for Children in Picturebooks and Graphic Novels. In Global Frankenstein, 209-225. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78142-6

Frankenstein is surprisingly well-suited to stories aimed at children and is often adapted for young readerships. This essay explores why, through a focus on graphic narratives. I examine five books: picturebooks Do not build a Frankenstein! by Neil... Read More about Our Progeny’s Monsters: Frankenstein Retold for Children in Picturebooks and Graphic Novels.

Mould ships and fungal islands: mycology, ecoGothic and William Hope Hodgson’s ‘doubtful beings’ (2018)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Alder, E. (2018, July). Mould ships and fungal islands: mycology, ecoGothic and William Hope Hodgson’s ‘doubtful beings’. Paper presented at 14th Conference of the IGA 'Gothic Hybridities', Manchester Metropolitan University

For most of the long nineteenth century, the apparently hybrid biological workings and the unstable taxonomical status of moulds and fungi puzzled and fascinated scientists. Their ubiquity, plasticity, and position in what Ernst Haeckel termed a ‘bou... Read More about Mould ships and fungal islands: mycology, ecoGothic and William Hope Hodgson’s ‘doubtful beings’.

(Re)encountering monsters: animals in early-twentieth-century weird fiction (2017)
Journal Article
Alder, E. (2017). (Re)encountering monsters: animals in early-twentieth-century weird fiction. Textual Practice, 31(6), 1083-1100. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2017.1358686

Early twentieth century weird tales occupy an important place in the development of genre fictions. Among the innovations they contribute are new forms of monsters, diverging from earlier Gothic or mythological traditions, which spring, in part, from... Read More about (Re)encountering monsters: animals in early-twentieth-century weird fiction.

'Kraken'. (2014)
Book Chapter
Alder, E. (2014). 'Kraken'. In J. Weinstock (Ed.), The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. Ashgate Publishing

'Sea Monsters'. (2014)
Book Chapter
Alder, E. (2014). 'Sea Monsters'. In J. Weinstock (Ed.), The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic MonstersAshgate Publishing