Essie Fox
The author of gothic Victoriana shines a light into the darkness to reveal the creative choices she made at the beginning of her fifth novel The Fascination
The Fascination is my fifth novel in the Victorian gothic genre. Previous novels have seen stories set in the East End music halls, and haunted country houses, in London brothels, Indian temples – and in the studios creating the early moving films. It’s a time in history that’s filled with art and innovation, and new discoveries in science. It’s always fascinated me, ever since my teenage years when I read Wuthering Heights and Thomas Hardy’s tragic novels. Later, at university, the Victorian module was a favourite. It wasn’t just the human stories, though of course they are what bring these classic novels into life. It was the whole experience in which the vivid place descriptions loomed as real inside my mind, making me feel almost as if I’d travelled back in time to ‘see’ the stories playing out before my very eyes.
This rich and sensory experience is what I hope to emulate when I’m writing my own books. And now, in The Fascination, I’ve reimagined the worlds of the seedy rural fairgrounds, the glamour of the London theatres, or an anatomy museum based on one that did exist in London’s Oxford Street (before it was closed down on grounds of obscenity).