Beginning with the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631, an event so powerful it created a new landscape & inspired the desolate & savage paintings of Salvator Rosa, Richard Davenport-Hines traces the evolution of the gothic imagination. This revelatory history ranges through art, architecture, gardening, literature, photography, filmmaking, music, & clothing design, & takes in artists & creations as various as Byron, Horace Walpole, Goya, Frankenstein's monster, Edgar Allan Poe, Jackson Pollock, David Lynch, The Terminator, & The Cure.