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Popular Culture

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American Nightmares The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction Dale Bailey When Edgar Allan Poe set down the tale of the accursed House of Usher in 1839, he also laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has assumed a lasting role in American culture. "The House of Usher" and its literary progeny have not lacked for tenants in the century and a half since: writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King have taken rooms in the haunted houses of American fiction. Dale Bailey traces the haunted house tale from its origins in English gothic fiction to the paperback potboilers of the present, highlighting the unique significance of the house in the domestic, economic, and social ideologies of our nation. The author concludes that the haunted house has become a powerful and profoundly subversive symbol of everything that has gone nightmarishly awry in the American Dream. For more information contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

LC: 98-049557 PS 156 pp. 6 x 9ISBN 0-87972-789-6 Cloth $40.95 t ISBN 0-87972-790-X Paper $15.95 t To order, you can accumulate titles in the Shopping Cart by clicking on the bulleted lines below. You can submit your order electronically, paying for it with MasterCard or Visa. Click here for further explanation of shopping cart feature. Never ordered from us before? Read this first.

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