Wilkinson, Sarah

14 December 1779 ? - 19 March 1831 ?

British writer and novelist, about whom little biographical information is known for sure. She was a prolific composer of Gothic chapbooks and bluebooks (she's credited with at least fifty), and today suffers a certain ignomy, routinely regarded as a "commercial hack" -- and there's a certain measure of truth in that label. Not that her works aren't worth reading, but she wrote largely for the chapbook/bluebook trade, and let's just say that the emphasis there was not on literary quality.

Sites:
"Writing for the Spectre of Poverty: Exhuming Sarah Wilkinson's Bluebooks and Novels"
This scholarly essay by Franz Potter provides a very helpful overview of Wilkinson's life and literary labors. [Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text]
Sarah Wilkinson
Partial Gothic bibliography. [Corvey Women Writers on the Web, Sheffield Hallam U]


Etexts:
The Castle Spectre: An Ancient Baronial Romance [1820]
This is one of Wilkinson's chapbook renditions (the other was published in 1807), available here as an efacsimile in PDF, of Matthew Lewis's famed Gothic play The Castle Spectre. [The Haunted Curtain]

The Child of Mystery [1808] (448K)
[Chawton House Library]

"The Midnight Embrace"
This story by Wilkinson (thanks to Franz Potter for the identification), is a gender inversion of The Spectre Bridegroom motif; in this case, it's the woman who is betrayed and who reappears as the vengeful ghost
- at HorrorMasters (where it is incorrectly attributed to Matthew Lewis)   [PDF]

The Spectre; or, the Ruins of Belfont Priory [1806] a LitGothic etext
A classic chapbook, with names straight out of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto and motifs from Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron and who knows where else. Murdered corpses, family intrigue, blood-chilling horror, lost inheritance, fratricide, political complications, terrified servants, betrayed love, bloody spectres, gossipy peasants — what's not to love?
- at LitGothic (annotated; PDF)


"The Water Spectre" [1805] (35K) a LitGothic etext
Thanks to Franz Potter for correct identification of the authorship of this piece.
- at LitGothic
"Sarah Wilkinson."