• Gothic architecture influencing dark Victorian literature • Lawyers, secrecy, power & punishment in literature • Dickens’s obsession with law and injustice.

• Victorian newspapers & penny dreadfuls • Birthplace of sensational crime stories • Sweeney Todd legend (fiction + fear culture)

• Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary • Writers living in poverty, obsession, madness • The isolation of genius Charles Dickens • Workhouses, child labour, prisons and how it was used in Oliver Twist, Bleak House

• Victorian fascination with death & séances • Influence on Bram Stoker & gothic fiction • Fear of the unknown in industrial London

Walk by the museum Obsession with the past, curses, stolen artefacts • Gothic fiction’s fear of ancient knowledge • Writers inspired by history are turning it “dark”

• Oscar Wilde • Genius, queerness, censorship • Public downfall & literary punishment • The dark cost of truth and beauty