Gothic bluebooks
Gothic bluebooks were short forms of gothic fiction popular in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Description Examples of this form of fiction are now rare, surviving only in a few collections. One of the collections where a number of gothic bluebooks have been preserved is the Corvey Library. Gothic bluebooks were descendants of the chapbook, trade in which had nearly disappeared by 1800. They measured about three and a half to four inches wide and six to seven inches high. Many of the bluebooks contained outright plagiarism, being as they were merely plot summaries of full-length gothic novels. Almost all were abridgements of full-length gothic novels, usually without change of the title or characters' names from the original. Gothic bluebooks were usually either thirty-six or seventy-two pages long, selling for either sixpence or a shilling respectively. It is from their price that they derived the nicknames, "Shilling Shockers" and "Sixpenny Shockers". While full-length gothic novels written by authors like Horace Walpole, Matthew Lewis, and Ann Radcliffe were expensive, these "Sixpenny Shockers" were affordable versions of the same stories. These short forms of the Gothic were not popular with critics, with some deeming them as the toxic literary