I'm Dr Jay Sullivan
and I've written a book about the Victorians and their sensory obsession with mummies.
From the fin-de-siècle to the onset of the Great War, there was an avalanche of novels and short stories about reanimated mummies, cursed Egyptian jewellery and nightmarish museums. These stories are a feast for the senses, packed with uncanny music, mesmeric smells, and an overwhelming desire to touch, see, and even taste the past. Now mostly forgotten, from the 1880s through to the 1920s it was more popular than the vampire genre.
My book Egyptian Gothic: 1884-1920 is the first to examine the genre by using the frequent sensory descriptions within these texts to interrogate attitudes towards Empire. It argues that the Egyptianised Gothic does not support the British Empire, but instead shows the mummy fighting back against Western occupation.
Pre-order
Egyptian Gothic: 1884-1920 will be released on 22 October 2025 as part of the Palgrave Gothic series.
Pre-order links coming soon!
Praise for Egyptian Gothic: 1884-1920
Jay Sullivan’s comprehensive interrogation of fin-de-siècle mummy fiction reveals its weaponisation of sensual symbolism against the evils of imperialism – and conversely, its coded expression of fears about the imminent collapse of empire.
Dr Jasmine Day
Author of The Mummy's Curse
In this work, Sullivan brings sensory studies, ancient Egypt reception studies, literary studies, and studies of cultural history more broadly to bear on a rich body of texts not thoroughly
examined in any other single scholarly work. Delving into the Egyptianised Gothic one sense at a time—a fascinating approach that offers unique insights into sensual engagements with the past—Sullivan also uncovers how the sensory encounters in these narratives can undermine imperial power structures, allowing the empire to reach, gaze, or invade right back.
Dr Eleanor Dobson
University of Birmingham
Egyptian Gothic is a powerful, comprehensive book that will forever alter how you interact with ancient Egyptianised media past and present.
Raven Todd DaSilva
Author of The Other Ancient Civilisations
Egyptian Gothic beautifully illuminates the embodied encounter with the ancient past at the turn of the twentieth century.
Dr Angie Blumberg
Auburn University College of Liberal Arts
Jay Sullivan explores with great panache the sensory discourses of the Egyptian Gothic in a work of staggeringly encyclopaedic knowledge, range, and scope. Egyptian Gothic is rigorous, comprehensive, analytical, and – in places – genuinely very funny.
Dr Ian Kinane
University of Roehampton
Witty, illustrative, and fundamentally fascinating, this comprehensive study brings together criticisms of the Gothic, visual culture, museum studies, and literary analysis. Sullivan draws attention to the sensory reception of ‘mummy fiction’, and how Egypt’s resurrected past battles against the British Empire. A Gothic sensory treat!
Lauren Bruce
Founder of the International Society for the Study of Egyptomania
Get in touch
Whether you have a media request, collaboration idea, or a question about my work - I'd love to hear from you.