A Bibliography of Gothic Literature

This is a brief contextualisation of the Gothic genre, from its origins to the modern-day, to give you a sense of some of its better-known features. If you're interested in doing further reading, many of these works are available in the library.

NB many of these authors have produced several Gothic works; I've listed only the best-known. Feel free to dig up others.

1765	Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. Giant suits of armour, lost heirs, evil Counts, ghosts, knights, castles, seduced damsels.
1777	Clara Reeve, The Old English Baron. Ghosts, lost heirs, vengeance, trial by combat, a sentimental love story.
1786	William Beckford, "Vathek". Novella-length: demon-worshipping evil Caliph, with suitably exotic, orientalist decadence.
1794	Anne Radcliff, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Slighly repetitive; innocent damsel repeatedly pursued by bandit villain through crumbling Alpine castles. Corpses, monasteries, evil relations, orphans, rather irritating hero.
1796	Matthew Lewis, The Monk. The schlock gothic novel: corrupt monks, female demons in drag, sex with demons, incest, matricide, murder, elopement and the ghost of a bleeding nun.
1818	Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Obsessed scientists, forbidden knowledge, monsters, corpses, mountains, the polar ice-cap, wedding-night murder.
1819	John Polidori, "The Vampyre". The story which established the classic Victorian vampire as a dissolute but rather sexy nobleman.
1820	Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer. Rather tremendous novel following the strange career of the Wandering Jew.
1839	Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher". Incestuously intense siblings, a crumbling house by a sinister tarn, madness, obsession and burying your sister alive.
1847	James Rymer, "Varney the Vampire". More upper-class Victorian vampires.
1872	Sheridan Lefanu, "Carmilla" Central European lesbian vampire noblewoman, complete with coffin scene, seduction and giant cat.
1885	Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Scientist as monster, and the extremes of civilisation and savagery.
1897	Bram Stoker, Dracula. The famous Transylvanian count, incarcerating innocent lawyers and corrupting innocent women until destroyed by noble vampire hunters.
1931	H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness. The classic Gothic edifice refigured as nightmare alien city amid the eternal snows.
1946	Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan. Gormenghast, the ultimate Gothic castle, with its share of repression, ritual and nightmare colour.
1979	Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber. Luscious Gothic settings to well-known fairy tales from Perrault, with a feminist twist.

Critical Bibliography

Brian Aldiss (1986) Trillion Year Spree: the history of science fiction, Chapter 1. London: Gollancz. (Book in Short Loan)

Vanessa D. Dickerson (1993) "The ghost of a self: female identity in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Journal of Popular Culture, 27 (3). (Photocopy on Short Loan)

Mary A. Favret (1992) "A woman writes the fiction of science: the body in Frankenstein." Genders 14 (Fall). (Photocopy on short loan).

Sigmund Freud (1919) "The Uncanny", in The Gothick Novel: A Casebook, ed. Victor Sage. London: Macmillan. (Book in Short Loan)

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979) "Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve" in The Gothick Novel: A Casebook, ed. Victor Sage. London: Macmillan. (Book in Short Loan)

Rosemary Jackson (1981) "Gothic tales and novels" in Fantasy: the literature of subversion. London: Methuen. (Book in Short Loan).

John B. Lamb (1992) "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Milton's monstrous myth". Nineteenth Century Literature, 47(3) (Photocopy in Short Loan).

Anne K. Mellor (1988) "Possessing nature: the female in Frankenstein", in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Book in Short Loan).

David Punter (1996) The Literature of Terror, Vol. 1: The Gothic Tradition. London: Longman. (Book in Short Loan).

Brian Stableford (1995)"Frankenstein and the origins of science fiction" in Anticipations: essays on early science fiction and its precursors, ed. David Seed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. (Photocopy on Short Loan).

Anne Williams (1995) "Dispelling the name of the father" in Art of Darkness: A poetics of gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Book on Short Loan).

Web resources

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frankhome.html. Fascinating National Library of Medicine site linking the Frankenstein myth to developments in medicine.

Return to Frankenstein page.