Gothic fiction

Strawberry Hill, an English villa in the "Gothic revival" style, built by seminal Gothic writer Horace Walpole

Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.

Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).

Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.

Contents

First Gothic romances

The Castle of Otranto (1764) is usually regarded as the first Gothic novel.

This literary genre found its most natural settings in the very tall buildings of the Gothic style — often spelled "Gothick", to highlight their "medievalness" - castles, mansions, and monasteries, often remote, crumbling, and ruined. It was a fascination with this architecture and its related art, poetry (such as graveyard poets), and even landscape gardening that inspired the first wave of gothic novelists. For example, Horace Walpole, whose The Castle of Otranto (1764) is often regarded as the first true gothic romance, was obsessed with medieval gothic architecture, and built his own house, Strawberry Hill, in that form, sparking a fashion for gothic revival (Punter, 2004; 177).

His declared aim was to combine elements of the medieval romance, which he deemed too fanciful, and the modern novel, which he considered to be too confined to strict realism (Punter, 2004; 178). The basic plot created many other gothic staples, including a threatening mystery and an ancestral curse, as well as countless trappings such as hidden passages and oft-fainting heroines. The first edition was published disguised as an actual medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. When Walpole admitted to his authorship in the second edition, its originally favourable reception by literary reviewers changed into rejection. The romance, usually held in contempt by the educated as a tawdry and debased kind of writing, had only recently been made respectable by the works of Richardson and Fielding (Fuchs, 2004; 106). A romance with superstitious elements, and moreover void of didactical intention, was considered a setback and not acceptable as a modern production. Walpole's forgery, together with the blend of history and fiction that was contravening the principles of the Enlightenment, brought about the Gothic novel's association with fake documentation.

Clara Reeve, best known for her work The Old English Baron (1778), set out to take Walpole's plot and adapt it to the demands of the time by balancing fantastic elements with 18th century realism. The question now arose whether supernatural events that were not as evidently absurd as Walpole's would not lead the simpler minds to believe them possible. It was Ann Radcliffe's technique of the explained supernatural, in which every seemingly supernatural intrusion is eventually traced back to natural causes, and the impeccable conduct of her heroines that finally met with the approval of the reviewers. Radcliffe made the gothic novel socially acceptable, ironically followed by an abrupt degradation of its renown. Her success attracted many imitators, mostly of low quality, which soon led to a general perception of the genre as inferior, formulaic, and stereotypical. Among other elements, Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed into the Byronic hero. Radcliffe's novels, above all The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), were best-sellers, although along with all novels they were looked down upon by well-educated people as sensationalist women's entertainment (despite some men's enjoyment of them).

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days – my hair standing on end the whole time." [said Henry]
...
"I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. " [replied Catherine]
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (written 1798)

Radcliffe also provided an aesthetic for the burgeoning genre courtesy of her influential article "On the Supernatural in Poetry" in The New Monthly Magazine 7, 1826, pp 145–52, examining the distinction and correlation between horror and terror in Gothic fiction (Wright 2007: 35-56).

Developments in continental Europe, and The Monk

Contemporaneously to English Gothic, parallel Romantic literary movements developed in continental Europe: the roman noir ("black novel") in France, by such writers as François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, Gaston Leroux, Baculard d'Arnaud, and Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, Madame de Genlis and the Schauerroman ("shudder novel") in Germany by such writers as Friedrich Schiller, author of The Ghost-Seer (1789) and Christian Heinrich Spiess, author of Das Petermännchen (1791/92). These works were often more horrific and violent than the English gothic novel.

The fruit of this harvest of continental horrors was Matthew Gregory Lewis' lurid tale of monastic debauchery, black magic, and diabolism The Monk (1796). Though Lewis' novel could be read as a sly, tongue-in-cheek spoof of the emerging genre, self-parody was a constituent part of the Gothic from the time of the genre's inception with Walpole's Otranto. Lewis' tale appalled some contemporary readers; however his portrayal of depraved monks, sadistic inquisitors and spectral nuns, and his scurrilous view of the Catholic Church was an important development in the genre and influenced established terror-writer Anne Radcliffe in her last novel The Italian (1797). In this book the hapless protagonists are ensnared in a web of deceit by a malignant monk called Schedoni and eventually dragged before the tribunals of the Inquisition in Rome, leading one contemporary to remark that if Radcliffe wished to transcend the horror of these scenes she would have to visit hell itself (Birkhead 1921).

The Marquis de Sade used a gothic framework for some of his fiction, notably The Misfortunes of Virtue and Eugenie de Franval, though the marquis himself never thought of his work as such. Sade critiqued the genre in the preface of his Reflections on the novel (1800) which is widely accepted today, stating that the gothic is "the inevitable product of the revolutionary shock with which the whole of Europe resounded". This correlation between the French revolutionary Terror and the "terrorist school" of writing represented by Radcliffe and Lewis was noted by contemporary critics of the genre (Wright 2007: 57-73). Sade considered The Monk to be superior to the work of Ann Radcliffe.

Other notable writers in the continental tradition include Jan Potocki (1761–1815) and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822).

Parody

The excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of the traditional Gothic made it rich territory for satire (Skarda 1986). The most famous parody of the Gothic is Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey (1818) in which the naive protagonist, after reading too much Gothic fiction, conceives herself a heroine of a Radcliffian romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side, though the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. Jane Austen's novel is valuable for including a list of early Gothic works since known as the Northanger Horrid Novels:

These books, with their lurid titles, were once thought to be the creations of Jane Austen's imagination, though later research by Michael Sadleir and Montague Summers confirmed that they did actually exist and stimulated renewed interest in the Gothic. They are currently all being reprinted by Valancourt Press (Wright 2007: 29-32).

Another example of Gothic parody in a similar vein is The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett (1813). Cherry Wilkinson, a fatuous female protagonist with a history of novel-reading, fancies herself as the heroine of a Gothic romance. She perceives and models reality according to the stereotypes and typical plot structures of the Gothic novel, leading to a series of absurd events culminating in catastrophe. After her downfall, her affectations and excessive imaginations become eventually subdued by the voice of reason in the form of Stuart, a paternal figure, under whose guidance the protagonist receives a sound education and correction of her misguided taste (Skarda 1986).

The Romantics

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) has come to define Gothic fiction in the Romantic period. Frontispiece to 1831 edition shown.

Further contributions to the Gothic genre were provided in the work of the Romantic poets. Prominent examples include Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel and Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) and Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1820) which feature mysteriously fey ladies (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 33-5, 132-3). In the latter poem the names of the characters, the dream visions and the macabre physical details are influenced by the novels of premiere Gothicist Anne Radcliffe (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 132-3).

The poetry, romantic adventures and character of Lord Byron, characterised by his spurned lover Lady Caroline Lamb as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' was another inspiration for the Gothic, providing the archetype of the Byronic hero. Byron features, under the codename of 'Lord Ruthven', in Lady Caroline's own Gothic novel: Glenarvon (1816). Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati on the banks of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. This occasion was productive of both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori's The Vampyre (1819). This latter story revives Lamb's Byronic 'Lord Ruthven', but this time as a vampire. The Vampyre has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction and theatre (and latterly film) which has not ceased to this day. Mary Shelley's novel, though clearly influenced by the gothic tradition, is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the omission in the novel of any scientific explanation of the monster's animation and the focus instead on the moral issues and consequences of such a creation.

A late example of traditional Gothic is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin which combines themes of Anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero (Varma 1986).

Victorian Gothic

Edgar Allan Poe was an important reinterpreter of Gothic fiction.

By the Victorian era Gothic had ceased to be the dominant genre (in fact the form's popularity as an established genre had already begun to erode with the success of the historical romance popularised by Sir Walter Scott). However, in many ways, it was now entering its most creative phase. Recently readers and critics have begun to reconsider a number of previously overlooked Penny Blood or Penny Dreadful serial fictions by such authors such as G.W.M. Reynolds who wrote a trilogy of Gothic horror novels: Faust (1846), Wagner the Wehr-wolf (1847) and The Necromancer (1857) (Baddeley 2002: 143-4). Reynolds was also responsible for The Mysteries of London which has been accorded an important place in the development of the urban as a particularly Victorian Gothic setting, an area within which interesting links can be made with established readings of the work of Dickens and others. Another famous penny dreadful of this era was the anonymously authored Varney the Vampire (1847). The formal relationship between these fictions, serialised for predominantly working class audiences, and the roughly contemporaneous sensation fictions serialised in middle class periodicals is also an area worthy of inquiry. Influential critics, above all John Ruskin, far from denouncing mediaeval obscurantism, praised the imagination and fantasy exemplified by its gothic architecture, influencing the Pre-Raphaelites.

An important and innovative reinterpreter of the Gothic in this period was Edgar Allan Poe who believed 'that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul'. His story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) explores these 'terrors of the soul' whilst revisiting classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 181-2). The legendary villainy of the Spanish Inquisition, previously explored by Gothicists Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin, is revisited in "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842). The influence of Ann Radcliffe is also detectable in Poe's "The Oval Portrait" (1842), including an honorary mention of her name in the text of the story.

The influence of Byronic Romanticism evident in Poe is also apparent in the work of the Brontë sisters. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff whilst Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) adds the madwoman in the attic (Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar 1979) to the cast of gothic fiction. The Brontës' fiction is seen by some feminist critics as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Cathy are both examples of female protagonists in such a role (Jackson 1981: 123-29). Louisa May Alcott's gothic potboiler, A Long Fatal Love Chase (written in 1866, but published in 1995) is also an interesting specimen of this subgenre.

Elizabeth Gaskell's tales "The Doom of the Griffiths" (1858) "Lois the Witch", and "The Grey Woman" all employ one of the most common themes of Gothic fiction, the power of ancestral sins to curse future generations, or the fear that they will.

The gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine of Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas (1864) shows the direct influence of both Walpole's Otranto and Radcliffe's Udolpho. Le Fanu's short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872) includes the superlative vampire tale Carmilla, which provided fresh blood for that particular strand of the Gothic and influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). According to literary critic Terry Eagleton, Le Fanu, together with his predecessor Maturin and his successor Stoker, form a sub-genre of Irish Gothic, whose stories, featuring castles set in a barren landscape, with a cast of remote aristocrats dominating an atavistic peasantry, represent in allegorical form the political plight of colonial Ireland subjected to the Protestant Ascendancy (Eagleton 1995).

The genre was also a heavy influence on more mainstream writers, such as Charles Dickens, who read gothic novels as a teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his own works, shifting them to a more modern period and an urban setting, including Oliver Twist (1837-8) and Bleak House (1854) (Mighall 2003). These pointed to the juxtaposition of wealthy, ordered and affluent civilisation next to the disorder and barbarity of the poor within the same metropolis. Bleak House in particular is credited with seeing the introduction of urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film (Mighall 2007). His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). The mood and themes of the gothic novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their morbid obsession with mourning rituals, Mementos, and mortality in general.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) was a classic Gothic work of the 1880s, seeing many stage adaptations.

The 1880s, saw the revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to "fin de siecle" decadence, which fictionalized contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this Urban Gothic include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), George du Maurier's Trilby (1894), Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898), and the stories of Arthur Machen. The most famous gothic villain ever, Count Dracula was created by Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula (1897). Stoker's book also established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the locus classicus of the Gothic (Mighall 2003).

In America, two notable writers of the end of the 19th century, in the Gothic tradition, were Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers. Bierce's short stories were in the horrific and pessimistic tradition of Poe. Chambers, though, indulged in the decadent style of Wilde and Machen (even to the extent of having a character named 'Wilde' in his The King in Yellow).

Post-Victorian legacy

Pulp magazines such as Weird Tales reprinted and popularized Gothic horror from the prior century.

Notable English twentieth century writers in the Gothic tradition include Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Hugh Walpole, and Marjorie Bowen. In America pulp magazines such as Weird Tales reprinted classic Gothic horror tales from the previous century, by such authors as Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton and printed new stories by modern authors featuring both traditional and new horrors (Goulart 1986). The most significant of these was H. P. Lovecraft who also wrote an excellent conspectus of the Gothic and supernatural horror tradition in his Supernatural Horror in Literature (1936) as well as developing a Mythos that would influence Gothic and contemporary horror well into the 21st century. Lovecraft's protégé, Robert Bloch, contributed to Weird Tales and penned Psycho (1959), which drew on the classic interests of the genre. From these, the gothic genre per se gave way to modern horror fiction, regarded by some literary critics as a branch of the Gothic (Wisker 2005: 232-33) although others use the term to cover the entire genre. Many modern writers of horror (or indeed other types of fiction) exhibit considerable gothic sensibilities—examples include the works of Anne Rice, as well as some of the sensationalist works of Stephen King (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 464-5, 478; Davenport-Hines 1998: 357-8).

In the twentieth century the Romantic strand of Gothic was taken up in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938) which is in many respects a reworking of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Other books by du Maurier, such as Jamaica Inn (1936), also display Gothic tendencies. Du Maurier's work inspired a substantial body of 'Female Gothics,' concerning heroines alternately swooning over or being terrified by scowling Byronic men in possession of acres of prime real estate and the appertaining droit de seigneur [1].

Gothic Romances of this description became popular during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with authors such as Phyllis A. Whitney, Joan Aiken, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels, Mary Stewart, and Jill Tattersall. Many featured covers depicting a terror-stricken woman in diaphanous attire in front of a gloomy castle. Many were published under the Paperback Library Gothic imprint and were marketed to a female audience. Though the authors were mostly women, some men wrote gothic romances under female pseudonyms. For instance the prolific Clarissa Ross and Marilyn Ross were pseudonyms for the male writer Dan Ross and Frank Belknap Long published Gothics under his wife's name, Lyda Belknap Long. Another example is British writer Peter O'Donnell, who wrote under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. Outside of companies like Lovespell, who carry Colleen Shannon, very few books seem to be published using the term today.

William Faulkner's novels and short stories exemplified the Southern Gothic genre.

The genre also influenced American writing to create the Southern Gothic genre, which combines some Gothic sensibilities (such as the Grotesque) with the setting and style of the Southern United States . Examples include William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and Flannery O'Connor (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 418-56). Contemporary American writers in this tradition include Joyce Carol Oates, in such novels as Bellefleur and A Bloodsmoor Romance and short story collections such as Night-Side (Skarda 1986b) and Raymond Kennedy in his novel Lulu Incognito. The Southern Ontario Gothic applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context. Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Barbara Gowdy, and Margaret Atwood have all produced works that are notable exemplars of this form. Another writer in this tradition was Henry Farrell whose best-known work was the Hollywood horror novel What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960). Farrel's novels spawned a sub-genre of 'Grande Dame Guignol' in the cinema, dubbed the 'Psycho-biddy' genre.

Other notable contemporary writers in the Gothic tradition are: Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black (1983); Patrick McGrath, author of The Grotesque (1989); Poppy Z. Brite, author of Lost Souls (1992) and Exquisite Corpse (1996); Caitlin Kiernan author of Silk (1998) (Davenport-Hines 1998: 377-8; Baddeley 2002: 84-7).

The themes of the literary Gothic have been translated into other media such as the theatre and had a notable revival in twentieth century gothic horror films such the classic Universal Horror films of the 1930s, Hammer Horror, and Roger Corman's (Davenport-Hines 1998: 355-8). Twentieth century rock and roll music also had its gothic side. Black Sabbath's 1969 debut album created a dark sound different from other bands at the time and has been called the first ever "Goth-rock" record (Baddeley 2002: 264). Themes from gothic writers such as H. P. Lovecraft were also used among gothic rock and heavy metal bands, especially in black metal, thrash metal (Metallica's The Call of Ktulu), death metal, and gothic metal. For example, heavy metal musician King Diamond delights in telling stories full of horror, theatricality, satanism and anti-Catholicism in his compositions (Baddeley 2002: 265). In Hindi cinema, the gothic tradition was combined with aspects of Indian culture, particularly reincarnation, to give rise to an "Indian gothic" genre, beginning with the films Mahal (1949) and Madhumati (1958).[1]

Prominent examples

  • Vathek, an Arabian Tale (1786) by William Thomas Beckford (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) by William Godwin (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • The Castle Spectre (1797) by Matthew Gregory Lewis (Full text)
  • The Horrors of Oakendale Abbey (1797) by Mrs Carver
  • Wieland (1798) by Charles Brockden Brown
  • The Children of the Abbey (1800) by Regina Maria Roche
  • The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1805) by Jan Potocki
  • Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Robert Maturin
  • Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) by Thomas de Quincey (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • The Adventure of the German Student (1824) by Washington Irving
  • The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo
  • "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Edward Randolph's Portrait (1838] by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Phantom Ship (1839) by Frederick Marryat
  • "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe (Full text at Wikisource)
  • The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall (1844) by George Lippard (full text at openlibrary.org)
  • Villette (1850) by Charlotte Brontë
  • The House of the Seven Gables (1851) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • What Was It? (1859) by Fitz-James O'Brien
  • The Mummy's Foot (1863) by Théophile Gautier (Full text at Wikisource)
  • Uncle Silas (1864) by Sheridan Le Fanu
  • The Horla (1887) by Guy de Maupassant (Full text at Wikisource)
  • The Death of Halpin Frayser (1891) by Ambrose Bierce
  • The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • The Yellow Sign (1895) by Robert W. Chambers
  • The Real Right Thing (1899) by Henry James
  • The Monkey's Paw (1902 by W. W. Jacobs (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • The Willows (1907) by Algernon Blackwood
  • The House on the Borderland (1907) by William Hope Hodgson
  • The Phantom of the Opera (1910) by Gaston Leroux (Full text at Project Gutenberg)
  • The Return (1910) by Walter de la Mare
  • "Afterward" (1910) by Edith Wharton
  • The Lair of the White Worm (1911) by Bram Stoker (Full text at Wikisource)
  • "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) by H.P. Lovecraft (Full text at Temple of Dagon.com)
  • The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (1932) by Clark Ashton Smith
  • Old Garfield's Heart (1933) by Robert E. Howard
  • Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier
  • Black Bargain (1942) by Robert Bloch
  • Malpertuis (1943) by Jean Ray (Hadji 1986: 350)
  • Dragonwyck (1945) by Anya Seton
  • The Lonesome Place (1948) by August Derleth
  • Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) by Truman Capote
  • The Girl with the Hungry Eyes (1949) by Fritz Lieber
  • "The Lottery" (1951) by Shirley Jackson
  • The Fog Horn (1951) by Ray Bradbury
  • A Visit (1952) by Shirley Jackson
  • Long Distance Call (1953) by Richard Matheson
  • The Vanishing American (1955) by Charles Beaumont
  • Gormenghast (1946–1959) by Mervyn Peake
  • I am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson
  • A Stir of Echoes (1958) by Richard Matheson
  • The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1963) by Shirley Jackson
  • Rosemary's Baby (1967) by Ira Levin
  • Last Summer (1968) by Evan Hunter
  • Don't Look Now (1970) by Daphne du Maurier
  • The Events at Poroth Farm (1972) by T.E.D. Klein
  • The Stepford Wives (1972) by Ira Levin
  • The Bloody Chamber (1974) By Angela Carter
  • The Chocolate War (1974) By Robert Cormier
  • Salem's Lot (1975) by Stephen King
  • Julia (1975) by Peter Straub
  • Interview with the Vampire (1976) by Anne Rice
  • The House Next Door (1976) by Anne Rivers Siddons
  • The Shining (1977) by Stephen King
  • Bellefleur (1980) by Joyce Carol Oates
  • The Elementals (1981) by Michael McDowell
  • The Keep (1981) by F. Paul Wilson
  • The Woman in Black (1983) by Susan Hill
  • Vastarien (1987) by Thomas Ligotti
  • Endless Night (1987) by Karl Edward Wagner
  • The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
  • Tales of Sesqua Valley (1997) by W.H. Pugmire
  • My Heart Laid Bare (1998) by Joyce Carol Oates
  • House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski
  • Uzumaki (2002 (English translation) by Junji Ito
  • The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2002) by Ridley Pearson and Stephen King
  • The Little Friend (2002) by Donna Tartt
  • Shutter Island (2003) by Dennis Lehane
  • The Thirteenth Tale (2006) by Diane Setterfield

Gothic satire

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Mishra, Vijay (2002), Bollywood cinema: temples of desire, Routledge, pp. 49–57, ISBN 0-415-93014-6 

References

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