Gothic Revival Section
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The Classical Gothic vs The Trade Gothic
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The Classic Vs The Trade Gothic
In the movie industry you have normal movies, which are considered wonderful whether they are or not and then the "b" movie, which is regarded as trash, at least in an artistic sense. We all know that not all "a" movies are truly wonderful and many people just love "b" movies, but we do see a distinction between the two.
The "a" movie is one where there is a larger budget, writing and directing which is supposedly at the top of it's game, great actors, and top of the line special effects. Obviously the producer wishes this movie to be a blockbuster, but it is primarily an artistic expression of a collaboration of people. While you do sometimes have snafus, you usually don't see things like obvious voice-overs, tinny-sounding atmosphere and horribly laughable and impossible plots. The "b" movie will often have those things due to swift production techniques. The producer of the "b" movie tends to produce mainly for quanitity rather than quality.
The same principle applies to gothic literature. You have what is known as Classical, or Canonical Gothic and then Trade Gothic. Within the realm of the canonical you have the greats such as Radcliffe, Shelly and Lewis, and if you do not feel that classical gothic ended with Maturin, Poe. Then you have Trade Gothic, which was created to fill the market with Gothic Literature.
The Trade Gothic was very popular, and best selling trade gothic novelists include William Ireland, Louis Stanhope and Sara Wilkinson. They presented their gothic writings withing the formats of novels, chapbooks and short tales. These were literarily well done with the usual concentration on the sublime and mysterious but for reasons which escape me, they are not considered to be classical. I guess one could make a distinction by comparing Bram Stoker or Shelley to Ann Rice or Stephen King, though personally I don't see King as being inferior to Shelley.
Included in this genre also was the "blue book" or the "penny dreadful" which were a series of short stories. They were sold with a blue cover and were about 30-70 pages long. They tended to not be intricate or artistic tales, they were simple stories intended for mass consumption. When they were not outright rewrites of classical gothic fiction, they were cheap and somewhat cheesy. One popular example of this genre was the series featuring "Varney the Vampire."
