It is the witching month at last. The mornings are cold, the leaves are turning color even here in the southwest U.S., and Halloween is on its way. It’s the perfect month for a gothic novel or two. Or twenty. A couple weeks ago a fellow Dark Academic was asking for book lists that might work for a bit of DA independent study and I realized I just happened to have one sitting around. A couple of years ago I wrote up a loose timeline of gothic literature. It’s not a definitive timeline but it’s a good combination of the most famous authors, the most important to the development of gothic horror, and a few personal favorites for good measure. It also technically includes novels from closely related genres like gothic romance and sensation novels but loosely speaking these all fit the theme.I’m Dark Academic, not a literal academic researcher. I originally made it for myself because I have a weird (but very DA) idea of fun and I’m throwing it out here as an autumn treat. You can read from oldest to youngest as a study guide, from youngest to oldest to get used to older writing styles, or pick at random as the mood strikes you. There’s no wrong way to DA.

Without further ado, I present my Gothic Literature 101 List:

1. 1764–The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
2. 1794–The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
3. 1796–The Monk by Matthew Lewis
4. 1806–Zofloya by Charlotte Dacre
5. 1818–Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
6. 1819–The Vampyre by John Polidori
7. 1820–Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
8. 1833-1849 approximately–the collected horrors of Edgar Allan Poe, especially Berenice (1835), The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), The Tell-Tale Heart (1843), Hop-Frog (1849)
9. 1847–Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
10. 1847–Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
11. 1860–The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
12. 1872–In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (this is a short story collection ending with Carmilla, which you can also find separately)
13. 1886–The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
14. 1890–The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
15. 1897–Dracula by Bram Stoker
16. 1898–The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
17. 1909–The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
18. 1938–Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
19. 1959–The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (if you saw the recent series it’s not much like the book, but both are fantastic)
20. 1962–We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
21. 1983–The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
22. 1985–Perfume: the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
23. 2000–House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
24. 2006–The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
25. 2009–White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi