Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History since the Dark Ages

Imagining the Pagan Past examines how British gods and goddesses have been represented from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Marion Gibson follows their appearances through chronicles, poetry, novels, plays, scientific writing and scholarly histories, treating pagan antiquity as a subject repeatedly reshaped by later generations.

The book moves from medieval accounts and antiquarian investigations to Romantic responses, the first Celtic revival and mid-20th-century treatments of northern deities. Its later chapters consider modern “New Age” interpretations and three schools of contemporary god-and-goddess fiction. Rather than reconstructing a single, stable pagan past, Gibson traces the changing literary and historical uses of Britain’s imagined deities.