Gothic has, since its inception, been concerned with the liminal nature of dreams and their relationship to the material. Monstrous figures within dreams function as manifestations of anxieties, but within the Gothic text, we see examples of beings and monsters who move from dream image to literal embodiment. This chapter explores the material manifestations of dream figures in the Gothic, taking the nineteenth-century short story as its focus. Gothic writing employs the dream primarily as a form of communication and is also concerned with the materiality of language, with articulation and (re)iteration. This materiality is a focus for psychoanalytic critics following Freud, such as Lacan, who regards language as essentially material, and Derrida, who in his concept of the trace picks up on the relationship between presence and absence, present and past, which these stories also explore. This chapter, then, will engage with theoretical concepts around language and communication to consider the materiality of the dream’s communications, through its nocturnal visitors/visitants. The concept of the trace is particularly fitting to the short story, which is able to infer without fully elucidating, to leave a trace, or a suggestion, of an idea. Like the dream, the short story’s latent content may appear ‘scant’ in comparison to its interpretation. Through the concept of embodiment in the dream narrative, the chapter will investigate the use of this format to explore anxieties around the unconscious dreaming state and its vulnerability to the monstrous, to a trace which becomes a presence, the spectral made manifest..

This chapter tracks Orsini’s influence in the United States in the years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. The radical émigré and promoter of terrorism Karl Heinzen applauded the spread of the ‘Orsini disease’ into America, seeing terrorist violence as an element of the bitter national debate over slavery. He was not alone. In the late 1850s, agitators on both sides of the debate drew inspiration from Orsini. Some, like the abolitionists John Brown and George Lawrence Jnr, saw connections between Orsini’s efforts to free Italians and the struggle to break the chains of America’s slaves. Pro-slavers like John Wilkes Booth and Cipriani Ferrandini also admired Orsini, seeing his struggle for Italian independence as synonymous with the South’s opposition to Abraham Lincoln’s emancipatory policies. In 1859, Brown led an armed assault on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, prompting press iage that linked the raid to the ‘instructions of radicals from abroad’. Ferrandini supposedly hatched a plot to kill Lincoln in 1861, citing Orsini as his inspiration. This plan was thwarted by the private detective Allan Pinkerton, but still the tension in America remained, and with it clear evidence that the ‘Orsini disease’ had spread terrorism to the United States.

This chapter charts the sudden rise and brutal fall of the Paris Commune, a revolutionary movement that seized control of the City of Light in the aftermath of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Comprising Jacobins, socialists, anarchists, republicans and even the wandering soldier-of-fortune Cluseret, the Commune represented the ideological diversity of the world’s radical movements or, as one newspaper had it – ‘the most fiendish representation of internationalist terrorism that has ever been seen ’. The lack of ideological cohesion in the Commune led to outside observers judging it by whatever prejudices they held. Some believed the Commune was a return to the sanguinary practices of the original French Revolution, whilst others feared it marked the arrival of communism in Europe. For police chiefs inured of terrorist conspiracy theories, the Commune provided evidence for their beliefs, necessitating a brutal suppression of the Communards in May 1871. Undeterred, certain Communards – Louise Michel and Élisée Reclus in particular – continued to dream of their revolutionary struggle.

The interpretation of Gothic dreams frequently focuses on psychoanalytical or narratological readings of Gothic dreams. This emphasis is often based on the underlying and often averred assumption of the secularisation of the period and the Gothic’s essential lack of concern with the metaphysical realities of the supernatural events it portrays. This chapter contests the assumption of secularity in early British Gothic literature, pointing to the survival of theological interpretations, their importance in contemporary dream discourse, and the ways in which Gothic texts engage with these beliefs. In order to map the complex nature of dream discourse in the period and its connection to the theological, this chapter provides a historical overview of theological ghost belief. It points to the survival of these conceptions of the dream and elucidates their influence on, and importance to, Gothic dreams. Theologised understandings of supernatural dreams and their provenance, purpose, and meaning are central to the Gothic. They are also intrinsically linked to wider theological debates about the nature of the soul, free will and determinism, theodicy, and providence, making, as will be explored, Gothic dreams as an index to the theological concerns of Gothic novels. Dream depiction in Gothic novels was by no means static. This chapter also maps the ways in which an increasingly medicalised discourse around dreams manifested in Gothic fiction. The influence of these discourses did not result in the rejection of supernatural understandings of the dream but rather in an increased emphasis on interpretative ambiguity, which allowed for both secular and theological possibilities of interpretation.

The essence of craft and craft being responsible for pulling all practical and thematic considerations together is explained, with examples. Time-saving devices, such as appropriate and timely planning and outlining, are emphasised, along with the hard work that is always needed to create an effective first draft and subsequent drafts. A number of writers’ approaches are explored, highlighting that there are no right or wrong ways, just hard and considered work. The dangers of being overly prescriptive or imperial are considered, and with reference to Matthew Salesses’s landmark contemporary text, Craft in the Real World. John Banville’s approaches to crime fiction and craft are considered. Practical and appropriate approaches to self-editing are explored and explained, along with the need to be authentic, and true to yourself and your work. Henry Sutton’s twenty-five craft tips are outlined. The work concludes with an emphasis on authorial control.

Throughout the 1870s, a fear persisted across Europe that the ex-Communards were poised to regroup and strike back, as part of a coordinated conspiracy with Marx’s First International. In pursuit of this imagined IWMA–Communard conspiracy, police across Europe resorted to blanket measures of repression, clampdowns on immigration and censoring radical publications. This anti-radical crusade was seized on by the Paris police prefecture as a means of rebuilding France’s intelligence capabilities in the wake of the war with Prussia. In Russia, the IWMA–Communard conspiracy was also linked by the Third Section to People’s Revenge, whose members were put on trial in 1871. Cynical and fantastical, these police efforts to combat an imagined conspiracy belie the reality that, rather than dreaming of a new Commune-like uprising, violent radicals were turning towards individual acts of terrorism, which Europe’s police had little capacity to thwart.

As this chapter explains, the real ‘international brotherhood’ of the 1860s was not spearheaded by nihilists but by Fenians – Irish-American radicals who sought Ireland’s emancipation from the British Empire. The New York-based chief of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), James Stephens, forged relationships with Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association in London, the Franco-American mercenary Gustave Cluseret and the Swiss republican Octave Fariola. With the help of these collaborators, the IRB launched a series of ambitious attacks in 1866 and 1867 in Canada, Ireland and England. The attacks failed but in the process a policeman was shot and a prison in London was bombed by Fenians, prompting public outrage and accusations in the press that the IRB had turned to terrorism, with one newspaper claiming that the Irish republican movement now ‘reeks of the dreaded violence and depravity of the Russian nihilists’. The lesson that targeted violence could alert the British public to Ireland’s plight was learned, prompting a new generation of Fenians to consider terrorism as the way forward in their struggle.

A revealing interview with James Patterson about process and his overriding adherence to the concept of ‘pace’ determines the first half of this chapter. How is pace defined and incorporated in crime fiction? What are its advantages, its possible weaknesses? Key genre authors’ approaches are explained. A comparison is made in relation to fluency between the beginning of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries; the latter being heavily influenced by the former. Tempo is discussed in relation to Patricia Highsmith’s approaches; along with reader genre expectation. Authorial intent is identified using work from Sara Paretsky, Denise Mina and James Sallis, among others. Concepts of narrative drive, succinctness and literary versus genre approaches and styles to and of pacing are further explored.

This chapter shows the folly of the police pursuing the IWMA–Communard conspiracy theory, by chronicling the spate of assassination attempts carried out across Europe in 1878. Attempts to link the shootings and stabbings to the supposed conspiracy denied the reality that Europe’s radicals were fragmenting rather than coming together in the 1870s, their allegiances split over whether to follow Marx’s vision of a communist revolution or Bakunin’s talk of an anarchist utopia. Beneath this schism, individual assassins and the world’s first terrorist organisation, Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), emerged to practise a new form of terrorist violence. This trend reached its crescendo in Russia in 1881, when People’s Will carried out the era’s most spectacular terrorist attack – the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a suicide bomber. This promoted an overhaul of Russia’s secret police and clumsy efforts to create a reactionary conspiracy against terrorism, in the form of the nationalist sect, the Holy Brotherhood. Neither this group nor the efforts of the tsar’s new secret police – the Okhrana – could stop the spread of terrorism in the 1880s, as People’s Will provided inspiration similar to that which Orsini had given radicals in the 1860s. The key to this inspiration was the tool by which People’s Will had taken the Holy Tsar’s life – dynamite.

The specifics of plot and point of view, and how they are the engines of long-form crime fiction are analysed practically and critically. Henry Sutton also draws on his own writing, and journey into crime fiction. Simplifying and being consistent with point of view and determining character intent are discussed. Two types of plot emerge: one, concerned with action, events and inciting incidents; the other being more organic and necessary and focused on character motivation and conflict. Puzzle plots are deemed of lesser importance than character-led plots. Readers’ enjoyment and engagement to character ahead of twisty plots are articulated. Aristotle’s Poetics is laid out as foundational, while modern and contemporary crime writers’ various practical approaches to plotting and planning prove that there are no right and wrong ways, only widely different approaches resulting in widely different styles. Positions from great modern genre writers such as Patricia Highsmith, Stephen King, Ruth Rendell and Walter Mosley are explored through citation. Further, the intricacies of hard-boiled fiction and noir fiction are explained, along with voice; specifically the voice of the novel, and how this might diverge from a writer’s voice and DNA.

The story concludes with an account of the most damaging act of terrorism in the twentieth century – the assassination of the archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, by Gavrilo Princip. A Serbian nationalist, admirer of ‘propaganda of the deed’ and student of People’s Will’s tactics, Princip was part of a group of assassins called Young Bosnia, whose members were all mindful of the deeds committed by the anarchist, nihilist, Fenian and nationalist terrorists who proceeded them. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the global war it began demonstrated the dangerous ideas formed during of the first age of terror, the shadow of which continues to loom over the world to this day.