A guide to Gothic literature

Dark, chilling, and characterised by looming terror, the Gothic novel has been hugely popular and influential for centuries. But behind the more superficial hallmarks of crumbling buildings, moody anti-heroes and complex heroines, Gothic literature has had a fascinating history and evolution. 

Though it originated in the 18^th Century as a response to the so-called Age of Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement where reason and scientific advancement prevailed, Gothic literature came of age in the early Victorian period, challenging morality and rationality through scandalous novels that dared to explore the darker side of human nature.

What unites works of Gothic fiction is a sense of the unfathomable: death and impending mortality; time and its passage; destruction and chaos; the awesome power of nature; supernatural forces; and, indeed, the shadowy depths of our own minds.

What is Gothic literature, and what are its key elements, themes and characteristics?

Before it was used in literary contexts, “Gothic” was coined by Italian writers in the late Renaissance period to describe a medieval style of art and architecture that originated in the 12^th Century. The term was derogatory, synonymous with barbarism – its root word Gothicus, after all, came from the Latin term for the Goths, a Germanic people who invaded and helped bring down the Roman Empire.

The first Gothic novel – The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764 and presented as a translation of a 16^th-Century manuscript – was fittingly inspired by a nightmare in which author Horace Walpole saw a ghost in his Gothic Revival-style home. By setting his novel in a haunted, Gothic-style castle, Walpole tapped into a prevailing fear of the superstition and barbarism widely associated with medievalism, which stood in stark contrast to the reason-based intellectual climate at the time.

Architecture quickly became an important, metaphorically charged aspect of setting in Gothic stories: winding tunnels came to signify the unknown, while crumbling, fragmented old buildings reflected characters’ unravelling psyches and time’s cruel march towards inevitable death and decay.

When was Gothic literature created?

The Castle of Otranto may have been the first Gothic novel, but the genre as a whole had influential predecessors. The grisly murders, timely vengeance, supernatural occurrences, witchcraft and castle settings of Shakespeare’s tragedies were a rich source of inspiration for Gothic literature and its conventions, as was John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (first published in 1667), whose tragic anti-hero Satan provided a blueprint for Gothic heroes and villains alike.

When Walpole revealed his authorship of Otranto for its second pressing (titled The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story, thus coining the genre’s name), readers balked at the idea of a modern author writing a ghost novel in the age of Enlightenment. However, the genre’s illicitness was part of its allure, and by the century’s end, Walpole had inspired the likes of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis to build on the genre with psychological and violent flourishes, respectively, which would shape Gothic literature for centuries to come.

By the mid-19^th Century, Gothic literature was busy exposing the cracks in the orderly, mannered society supposedly built on science, rationality and morality, asking how much we can really know when we don’t even know ourselves. The question reverberates through the genre and its offshoots to this day – including the ever-popular BookTok sensation dark academia.

Key examples of Gothic literature

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)

No list of Gothic novels would be complete without Walpole’s genre-defining tale of a cursed bloodline. When Conrad, heir to the Castle of Otranto, is suddenly killed on the day of his wedding to the beautiful princess Isabella, his father Manfred, lord of the castle, fears that there is truth to the ancient prophecy foretelling his family’s doom. Panicked, he steps in to marry Isabella, despite already being married, but a host of terrifying supernatural occurrences intervene until the prophecy is fulfilled.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794)

By the end of the 18^th Century, Ann Radcliffe was the leading author of Gothic literature, introducing the persecuted heroine as a trope of the genre and paving the way for Brontë sister classics like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights half a century later. The Mysteries of Udolpho centres on the story of Emily St Aubert, who must navigate a ghostly and ghastly world following the tragic death of her loving parents and the loss of her one true love. This psychological and supernatural novel is timeless in its rich characterisation and suspenseful storytelling, whilst also being a quintessential Gothic romance.

The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796)

Writing at the same time as Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis established a more violent and sexual side to Gothic literature with the story of a virtuous holy man whose sexual urges slowly lead to his unravelling. The Monk, whose first edition was published anonymously due to its portrayal of violence, rape and incest, was controversial – Lewis, who published the book before he turned 20, ended up censoring later editions – but extraordinarily popular.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Selected Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)

By the mid-19^th Century, the ravenous public appetite for Gothic literature had abated somewhat, but “penny dreadfuls” – cheap, widely available Gothic short stories – remained popular in England, and Gothic elements were permeating American fiction, especially the masterful work of Edgar Allan Poe. His supernatural short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” uses the titular building – the family home of the narrator’s childhood friend Roderick Usher – as a metaphor for both the human body and family lineage as he explores themes of selfhood and physical and mental decline.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

Towards the end of the 19^th Century, Gothic literature experienced a resurgence alongside the fin de siècle attitudes of decadence and societal decline. A host of significant works of Gothic literature – chief among them The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Dracula (1897) – espoused this, but none captured the fundamental unknowability of what goes on inside us like Robert Louis Stevenson’s psychological fantasy, which incisively depicted humanity’s capacity for evil.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

Until 1938, traditional Gothic fiction (as distinct from Southern Gothic, which thrived thanks to novels like William Faulkner’s Light in August) had largely been relegated to pulp magazine reprints – until the publication of Rebecca reignited an interest in the genre. Daphne du Maurier’s Jane Eyre-esque novel is a psychological masterpiece complete with all the hallmarks of a Gothic romance: a beautiful, crumbling estate; a fragile heroine in love with a man with a tortured past; and instead of supernatural forces, enough twists, turns and psychological manipulation to make even the reader question reality.

Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

Gothic literature spread its raven wings in the latter half of the 20^th Century, influencing not just romance but horror, fantasy, fairy tales, and Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman haunted by the spectre of her nameless dead child, known only on her tombstone as “Beloved”. Morrison brings those familiar Gothic themes – mortality; the passage of time; the supernatural; and, indeed, our own minds – to a psychological exploration of the enduring trauma of slavery. The result is an unsettling and undeniable masterpiece.