Description

“I wants to make your flesh creep” – reading and writing the Victorian Ghost Story

Exploring Victorian ghost stories as inspiration for new writing.

What better place to sit and talk (and write) ghost stories than the Leeds Library? The oldest parts of the library date from 1808, and many odd goings-on have been reported over the years.

How can we make our readers’ flesh crawl? What does a ghost story need to do to produce that pleasurable shudder which is, presumably, its point?

In this workshop, we will talk about ways to produce the ‘right’ atmosphere and setting and the ‘right’ creepy possibilities. And then, we will begin to write our own…

Ruth Robbins is Professor of English and Director of Research for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University. She has published widely on nineteeth-century writing, and is the author of Literary Feminisms (2000); Pater to Forster (2003); Subjectivity (2005); The British Short Story (2009, co-authored with Emma Liggins and Andrew Maunder); and Oscar Wilde (2011).

Cost: £10 per attendee