The 1770s were marked by the emergence of themes of violence, horror, and the supernatural in art: the birth of the Gothic. In 1782 the unveiling of Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare was met with a mixture of shock and fascination, and was followed by the cosmic visions of William Blake and the searing grotesque caricatures of James Gilray. While there have been several re-assessments of Gothic literature in recent years, Gothic Nightmares is the first serious consideration of these themes in visual art, from the 1770s up through the present.