The Baby Bat's Guide to Gothic Novels

A heroine flees a menacing castle in a flowing white nightgown. A vampire stalks the innocent by night. Dread creeps in with each sigh of wind through the ancient windowpane. These are the familiar images associated with gothic stories. 

With over two centuries of thrills and chills to explore, here’s everything you need to know to start devouring gothic novels like a true creature of the night.

What Is a Gothic Novel?

Technically, the term gothic novel refers to works of narrative fiction written in the Romantic period (roughly 1780-1830) and featuring dark, disturbing, often fantastical elements. However, the term can apply to any novel that uses the imagery and tropes associated with the genre. Gothic novels tend to be divided into two subgenres: gothic horror and gothic romance–but there is quite a bit of overlap between the two. 

The gothic as a genre is deeply preoccupied with the past. Whether it’s ancient evil, a malevolent landscape, or the literal undead, relics of a bygone era are bound to be central to a gothic story.

When the sins of the past and the resulting trauma refuse to stay buried, you’re definitely dealing with a gothic story. This is why haunted house narratives are such a mainstay of the genre.

Here are some typical features of gothic literature:

Gothic Story Elements

• Ghosts

• Vampires

• Madness

• Forbidden love

• Curses

• Evil clergy

• Decay and corruption

• Incest

• Manor houses (usually crumbling)

• Family secrets

• Disguises, masks, concealment

• Supernatural elements

• Woman protagonists

• “Thresholds” of life, especially marriage and death

• Labyrinths

• Ruins

• Preoccupation with the past

• Isolated settings 

• Hostile landscapes with fog, storms, windswept moors, and bitter cold (or stifling summer heat in the case of Southern gothic stories)

• Doppelgangers

• The Uncanny

Classic Gothic Novels

The first gothic novels were written in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. They tackled themes of the macabre, taking the Romantic era’s obsession with imagination and the supernatural down dark and winding paths.

Horace Walpole - The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Published in 1764, this is widely considered to be the first gothic novel. With its classic story of an innocent girl imprisoned by an evil prince and plenty of supernatural intrigue, twists, and turns, it’s been captivating readers for over two centuries.

Matthew Lewis - The Monk (1797)

Part of the twisted fun of these books is that they’re shocking and sensationalized, and this is especially true of the gothic novel The Monk. It tells the story of Ambrosio, a Capucin superior who becomes seized with lust for a girl hiding out at the monastery, eventually descending into all manner of sorcery and depravity. 

Ann Radcliffe - The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

This book has it all: crumbling castles, dark mysteries, a noble family in decline and a heroine trapped at the mercy of a machiavellian lord. With its exotic locales and sensational elements, this popular novel became hugely influential on future gothic writers, and was lampooned by Jane Austen in her tongue-in-cheek satire of gothic novels, Northanger Abbey.

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1819)

Part science fiction, part gothic horror, this classic novel is a cautionary tale about the hubris of mankind. Unlike in most film adaptations, the Creature is able to speak, telling the world about his melancholy fate. If you enjoy Shelley’s dark vision, check out her other speculative novel The Last Man, about the lone survivor of a deadly pandemic (topical!).

John Polidori - The Vampyr (1819)

This early vampire novella was written on the same summer vacation on Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley first conceived of Frankenstein. It’s loosely based on the exploits of the poet Lord Byron (Polidori was his personal physician), imagining him as a bloodsucking fiend instead of just an aristocratic cad.

Victorian Era Gothic Literature

The Victorian era saw the rise of an obsession with death and its rituals, even as the world was becoming more and more modern with the advent of new technologies. These anxieties and more produced gothic horror that still has the power to send a chill up your spine.

Louisa May Alcott - A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)[1995]

Although she became world famous for the wholesome coming of age tale Little Women, Alcott’s other passion lay in writing thrilling gothic potboilers featuring devious maidens and brooding men. For example, this novel has a suitor who takes not taking ‘no’ for an answer to bizarre extremes. If you like this gloriously unhinged, not to say trashy version of Alcott, check out her other gothic horror book Behind a Mask.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Marble Faun (1860)

Hawthorne’s work is full of parables about art and artists, and the creators in his pages are often driven mad by their inability to articulate the perfection that haunts their dreams. Described as “shadowy, weird, fantastic,” this gothic romance tells the story of a sculptor, a mysterious count, a beautiful painter, and an innocent copyist, and the “evil genius” that haunts the narrative.

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Wilde shocked the world with this story of a dissolute young man whose beauty remains radiant while a hidden portrait reflects the corruption of his soul. This book features some of Wilde’s wittiest one-liners and most beautiful prose as he meditates on his perennial themes of art, beauty, and morality (or lack thereof).

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights (1847)

This timeless tale of doomed love tells the story of Heathcliff and Cathy, two childhood friends whose mutual obsession destroys both their lives and transcends death itself. If you love desolate landscapes, ghostly visions, and characters who are unrepentantly awful (or you’re just a Kate Bush fan), this classic book deserves a spot on your shelf.

Sheridan Le Fanu - In a Glass Darkly (1872)

This spellbinding story collection includes the short vampire novel Carmilla. In addition to its famous lesbian vampire, it features themes of claustrophobia, madness, and premature burial–there’s plenty here to show gothic horror fans a bloody good time. If you love Edgar Allan Poe, give these gothic tales a read.

Bram Stoker - Dracula (1897)

No list of gothic novels would be complete without this, the most famous of vampire novels. Even if you’ve seen a million adaptations, the book still has plenty of dark delights in store. (Such as a pistol-shooting American cowboy named Quincy, who sadly makes it into very few big screen versions.)

Modern Gothic Novels

Starting with the birth of modernism in the early twentieth century, authors began exploring dark themes using new literary techniques such as stream of consciousness narration. These writers bring psychological depth and acute powers of observation to their gothic excavations.

Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

You might have been traumatized in high school by Jackson’s famous story of small-town human sacrifice, “The Lottery,” but her legacy in horror fiction runs much deeper. At once mournful and terrifying, this haunted house story set the template for the genre as we know it.

Anne Rice - The Witching Hour (1990)

Dripping with Southern gothic atmosphere as thick as Spanish moss, this novel tells the story of the notorious New Orleans Mayfair family. The wealthy and powerful Mayfair clan is rumored to be made up of powerful magic practitioners–and that’s the least of their secrets. If you enjoy Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, give her spellbinding witches a try–but be advised that this book series is wild.

Octavia Butler - Fledgling (2005)

Known for her dark science fiction, Octavia Butler combines vampire lore with sci-fi to explore the gothic mode in this deeply disturbing novel. When Shori awakens in a cave with no memory of how she got there, she only knows one thing: she craves blood. Butler weaves together themes of race, identity, and agency as Shori discovers her vampire nature.

Eudora Welty - Delta Wedding (1946)

A girl returns to her ancestral home in the Mississippi Delta for a family wedding, and discovers whispers of the past all around her. Featuring magic, a decaying house, and a literal river of secrets, Delta Wedding is part coming of age story, part haunting gothic tale.

Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon (1977)

Morrison’s gothic masterpiece might be Beloved, but this story of haunted patriarch Macon “Milkman” Dead, whose family line is unable to escape the shadows of the past, is also alive with darkness and mystery. Milkman grapples with his own demons as he strives to uncover the secret of his sister’s strange “inheritance.”

Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)

This ambitious, meticulously crafted novel follows Jojo, a young boy who can speak with spirits, as he grapples with the more worldly concerns of his mother’s drug addiction and his father’s recent release from prison. Featuring multiple narrators and a journey into the unknown, this book weaves together themes of life and death and the lingering legacy of slavery.

These classic and contemporary gothic novels should keep your heart pounding and your spine tingling for the near future.

For even more deliciously dark reads, check out this list of contemporary goth books.