By INTAN PARAMADITHA
Reviewed by LAUREN YU-TING BO

In 1797, an anonymous essay titled “Terrorist Novel Writing,” in reference to the term used to describe gothic novels at that time, appeared in the British publication The Spirit of the Public Journals. The essay concluded with a “recipe” for creating a gothic novel in the style of author Ann Radcliffe, whose writing would largely be used to define what second-wave feminist literary scholars in the 1970s would call the “female gothic.” The recipe included a list of tropes: “Take – An old castle, half of it ruinous. / A long gallery, with a great many doors, some secret ones. / Three murdered bodies, quite fresh…” And so it goes.