‘Wireless Message from a Vast Emitter’: Blackwood's Gothic Media

Algernon Blackwood wrote in many broadly Gothic modes, from the traditional ghost story to pioneering tales of eco-horror. One largely unnoticed thread of thematic continuity running through much of his oeuvre is an abiding interest in the media technologies and networks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – an interest which is perhaps not so very surprising considering his lifelong engagement with such technologies, from his days as a reporter in the media ecology of 1890s New York City to his later reinvention as a media star in the early decades of the BBC. This article considers Blackwood's imaginative engagement with telephony, photography, wireless, and other media technologies and networks in his autobiographical writing as well as both supernatural and ‘super-Natural’ tales including ‘You May Telephone from Here’ and ‘The Man whom the Trees Loved.’