#FAMOUS GOTHIC LITERATURE AUTHORS SERIES#

'Gothic' can be a relatively subjective term, not as cut-and-dried and easy to define as such even for people who know literature and many other people are relatively clueless about what it is (as some of their list additions demonstrate!) I don't know the list creator, Rachel but I'm guessing she set up that criteria as a way of bringing in an objective yardstick, and replacing idiosyncratic individual judgement with the collective perspective of many readers (in the hope that the latter would be more likely to be accurate).Īll of that said, I can see Gothic elements in Dracula, though I personally usually associate 'Gothic' with something set strictly in or around one particular sinister building. (I don't know how large that number has to be.) The more people who have a 'Gothic' shelf (I don't myself) and list a particular book on it, the more likely it is that Goodreads will list 'Gothic' as one of the book's genres. On the book records, where a list of 'Genres' is supplied, the Goodreads program apparently lists every customized shelf name (like 'Gothic,' 'Fiction,' 'Horror,' etc.) that a certain number of people have all shelved the book as. Some very simple, generic shelf names, like Gothic, are used by a LOT of people, even though they don't coordinate with each other.

But many people go on to create customized shelves of their own, sometimes by genre (including 'Gothic'). When you join Goodreads, the program automatically sets your bookshelves up with three basic shelves (read, currently reading, and to read). Jon, good question! There is but one person can't do it alone. So if you want to try a Gothic novel without dealing with the more difficult language (or content that hasn't aged well) of older books, there are still plenty out there to try.Jon wrote: 'If the main consideration for a book's inclusion is it having the genre listing of Gothic on its book page, is there a way to make such a thing happen?' There are tons of different interpretations or subgenres of Gothic out there now too, like Southern Gothic (set in the Southern United States) or postcolonial Gothic (discussing or involving places recovering from colonial rule). It's not the most popular genre, sure, but there are still authors who write in this style and have for quite a while. Just because Gothic fiction started in the 18th Century doesn't mean the genre is dead, though. And to be fair, Gothic fiction sometimes involves a romantic relationship or two. The term 'Gothic horror' sometimes gets used to describe Gothic books that lean more into the horrific side of this kind of story and pull from horror fiction tropes, but they're still Gothic fiction at their core.

#FAMOUS GOTHIC LITERATURE AUTHORS SERIES#

To be fair, there was also a long-lived series of dime novels that were romances, but set in spooky castles and often showing a woman on the cover in a gauzy Victorian style nightgown, holding a candelabra while running away from a darkened castle. Many of the more famous Gothic fiction novels were written around this time, in what is considered the Romantic period of literature, which is why you sometimes see the term 'Gothic romance'. The term Gothic being attached to this genre is usually attributed to Horace Walpole, who wrote Otranto in 1764 and gave it the subtitle A Gothic Story when the second edition was published. Evil on the other hand is a pretty common topic. Sometimes the concept of the Devil involved, though not always. Often, there are ghosts or the possibility of ghosts.

Often, the house has a grand and storied history but is now in decay, and the humanity of the people who live there is in question, and there's one beautiful but brooding man among the wreckage. So what is it? A quick way to describe it would be the story of a person trapped in a spooky house.

But what makes a book Gothic? Is Gothic horror and Gothic romance the same as just Gothic? But have you heard of Gothic fiction? Maybe! Have you read it? Probably! Many required reading books in school fall into the Gothic genre, such as Dracula and Frankenstein and even Jane Eyre. You may have heard of Gothic architecture, or the Goths and Visigoths in the 3rd-5th Centuries, or the goth subculture of music and fashion.

Famous gothic literature authors