my gothic reading list

what i've read and what i want to read!

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.”
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

In my opinion, one of the most important things for an English student to have is a genre that they are consistently and slightly-unhealthily obsessed with, one that occupies just a little too much space in a brain that’s already jam-packed with other thoughts and concerns. For my roommate, it’s science fiction. For me, it’s the Gothic.

At this point, I have a strong lineup of Gothic stories under my belt, but I also have just as many that I have yet to read, so I thought I’d share them with you all! These lists will include all kinds of Gothic, not just the classics (although I am a lover of the classics, so there will be plenty of those, too)

I will use ★ to denote my favorites and ☆ for my current reads or books I’ve started, but not finished yet.

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My Gothic reads

(In order of publication date)

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) ★

• “The Vampyre” by John William Polidori (1819)

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847) ★

• Wuthering Heights¹ by Emily Brontë (1847) ★

• Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872) ★

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

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)

• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

• Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) ★

• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

• “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor (1953)

• Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy (1985)

• Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)

• A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson (2021)

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My Gothic TBR

(In order of publication date)

• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)

• The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe (1701)

• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794)

• The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796) ☆

• Zofloya by Charlotte Dacre (1806)

• “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)

• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)

• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) ☆

• Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier (1938)

• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy (1973)

• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (1976) ☆

• The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas (2022)

• Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas (2023) ☆

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I’m always (ALWAYS) looking to expand my Gothic TBR, so if you have any recommendations, feel free to let me know! And while you’re here, I have to plug my Carmilla essay, because apparently people have been liking it (and I’m also very proud of it <3). It’s pretty brief, so if you haven’t read it and are looking for some musings on a classic vampire tale, feel free to check it out!

the defanging of carmilla

1. Like any Wuthering Heights lover, I have thoughts on the upcoming film adaptation (and do NOT call me a prude, because I would be down for that weird erotic energy with ANY other movie than an adaptation of Wuthering Heights). At the moment, I’m not planning on watching it, because any adaptation that thinks it’s a good idea to entirely disregard the racial/colonial aspect of Heathcliff’s character by casting the whitest of white boys Jacob Elordi is one that doesn’t deserve my time! I will be rereading the book instead :)