The Romance of the Forest

Mary Shelley started it at 18: a student builds a living creature from dead matter and then abandons it. The novel that founded science fiction is also one of the darkest gothic tragedies ever written.

Mary Shelley

Orphaned Emily St. Aubert is locked inside a remote Apennine castle by her scheming guardian, where veiled pictures and midnight sounds hide a terrible secret. The 1794 bestseller that defined the gothic novel.

Ann Radcliffe

A young peasant spends three nights in the sealed wing of Lovel Castle, where groans and an armored ghost point to a buried crime. One of the first gothic novels, written in 1778 as a reply to The Castle of Otranto.

Clara Reeve

Victoria, a proud Venetian noblewoman, sinks into murder with the help of a mysterious Moorish servant who is not what he seems. A wild and shocking 1806 gothic novel with one of the genre's most daring villainesses.

Charlotte Dacre

Harriet Brandt charms everyone she meets at a Belgian resort, yet the people closest to her grow weak and die. Published the same year as Dracula, it is a psychological vampire novel about heredity and guilt.

Florence Marryat