Book List: Must-Read Gothic Novels, Part 1 (Pre–1900 Publications)

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I absolutely love a good gothic novel. From decaying ruins to sprawling mansions with inky turrets, dark histories, winding stairways, hidden rooms, secret passages, mysterious portraits, and buried skeletons (both literal and figurative) to a building sense of unease, dread, mystery, darkness, danger, lust, forbidden romance, and — often — outright cruelty, violence, evil, and death, gothic fiction is sometimes tangible, often spectral, and always riveting. It’s a chance to explore the dark side.

Gothic is a feeling, a singular atmosphere that takes the reader on deliciously dark and often twisted journeys. Stories may not end happily and often conclude with searing final images and a disquieting sense of dread. Done well, they’re literary journeys like no other.

The genre was established with Horace Walpole’s publication of The Castle of Otranto in 1764, and while there are innumerable incredible classic and contemporary gothic works available — and this reader has only scratched the surface, particularly where classics are concerned — I’ve chosen 20 of my current favorites, along with a bonus and TBR Pile Peek of anticipated reads for each category (because making bookish decisions is just too difficult!).

This three-part series will be broken down as follows:

• Part 1, below, includes gothic novels published before 1900,
• Part 2 will include those published between 1900–1999, and
• Part 3 will include those published from 2000–present.

Must-Read Gothic Novels Published Before 1900

• Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818), a compelling and heartbreaking cautionary tale that explores cruelty, monstrousness, and humanity’s superficiality through an eloquent (though horrific-looking) monster quite different from the famed 1931 movie adaptation — a gothic horror staple.
  
  
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847), a captivating story of cruelty, perseverance, secrets, betrayal, and yearning in the face of stringent societal ideals.
  
  
• The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a collection (rather than a single novel) of mysterious, morbid, and gruesome tales and poems penned by the American Goth father, macabre master, and detective story creator. The best place to begin? The short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890), an engrossing story of a young man who sells his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty — a Faustian bargain that results in moral deterioration.
  
  
• Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897), a captivating, imaginative, and terror-filled novel that, though not the first, may well be the best known and most enduring vampiric masterpiece.
  
  
• Bonus: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1817), a delightful, readable classic that staunchly supports novel-reading and lovingly ribs the gothic genre.

• TBR Pile Peek: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794), The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861)

Do you have any favorite pre–1900 gothic novels not included here that you’d recommend?

❤Amanda

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