Gothic Novels in Pittsburgh: An Evening with Rivers of Steel

The Industrial Revolution in Pittsburgh is an era that evokes classic 19th-century gothic literature.  Darkness, smoke, flickering lights, eerie soundscapes, and dramatic architectural spaces commingle and inspire horrible awe. Pittsburgh's 19th-century landscape offered all of this to the American gothic imagination. One novel in particular, Samuel Young's 1845 The Smoky City: A Tale of Crime, is a "lost" gothic novel of Pittsburgh. Let us wander the burned out city streets of Pittsburgh's 19th-century and traverse its ever-haunted byways in search of this forgotten tale for a little taste of Halloween in July.

Presenter bio: Dr. Kirsten Paine is the Museum Education & Historic Interpretation Manager at Rivers of Steel.  In addition to public history work related to 19th-century industrial labor, she specializes in 19th-century American women writers.  She earned her PhD in English from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 where she wrote her dissertation, "Not According to the Regulation of War": Intimate Civil War Writing by Female Nurses, Soldiers, and Spies, which she is currently revising into a book.