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In this opening session of a new reading group on various forms of Gothic literature, Prof Dale Townshend from Manchester Metropolitan University and Dr Natalie Zacek will lead a discussion of pre-circulated fictions that centre on eerie Anglo-Chinese encounters.

The stories in Thomas Burke's 1916 Limehouse Nights depict the lives of the inhabitants of London's first Chinatown through the lens of pulp fiction, and an excerpt from Sax Rohmer's The Mystery of Fu Manchu centres on the supposedly Chinese vice of opium-smoking.

There will be racist descriptions and content in these readings and we will be discussing those as part of the session.

Readings are "The Bird" and "Tai Fu and Pansy Greers" from Thomas Burke, Limehouse Nights (The Project Gutenberg eBook of Limehouse Nights, by Thomas Burke) and Chapters 1-6 from Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer).