History, folklore, evolution and gender in nineteenth-century British werewolf literature (1846-1900)

Thomson, Craig James (2025) History, folklore, evolution and gender in nineteenth-century British werewolf literature (1846-1900). PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

Of all the creatures associated with the Gothic, the werewolf stands as one of the genre’s most enduring motifs. Yet, while it would feature in classical and medieval literature, the creature would disappear into relative obscurity during the Early Modern and Enlightenment periods. It would not be until the nineteenth century when the creature was revived within several popular literary texts including: Clemence Housman’s ‘The Were-wolf’ (1896), Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Mark of the Beast’ (1890) and Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-wolves (1865). This thesis will attempt to understand the reasons for the werewolf’s revival, as well as how this period informs the werewolf’s development within popular culture. Using a particularistic, cultural historical approach, this project analyses the werewolf in relation to mid-to-late nineteenth-century Britain, drawing from several strands of enquiry such as history, folklore, evolutionary science and popular culture. The first chapter focuses on how mid-to-late nineteenth century writers like Baring-Gould were able to develop a universal history of the werewolf in non-fiction, something that would influence later writers. The second chapter investigates how the rise of popular fiction and folklore helped revitalise the beast, allowing writers to not only draw upon traditional folkloric beliefs, but also to develop their own interpretations, creating ‘folkloresque’ depictions of the creature that codified how it was presented for later generations. The last chapter interrogates how the rising influence of evolutionary biology allowed the werewolf to become the perfect allegorical vessel for mid-to-late nineteenth-century concerns relating to degeneration and regeneration, particularly regarding race and gender roles. In doing so, this thesis works as a new literary history of the werewolf in mid-to-late-nineteenth-century Britain, shedding further detail on the reasons for the werewolf’s literary revival within the period, but also how this era sets the blueprint for the werewolf’s evolution within twentieth-century popular culture.

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