Here’s something I will say, quite regularly, and will absolutely always stand by. Women have always been part of Horror. Some of (though not the first) the first horror novels were written by women – Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian was published in 1796, inspired by The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, and of course Frankenstein is still a hugely popular classic, written by Mary Shelley. Even some of the classics contain elements of horror, seeping into novels penned by women, because let’s face it, a woman’s life contains a multitude of horrors. Who can ever forget the imagery of a woman trapped in an attic, simply because she is unwell, while her husband brings in a new, younger woman?