Gothic literature has a timeless appeal. As long as people are horrible to each other in grand, sweeping ways, as long as there are unbalanced power dynamics and people willing to exploit them, as long as people decide to psychologically torture each other instead of going to therapy, gothic literature will be there — offering catharsis, or at least, to make the horrors sexy.
Maybe you find yourself with a sudden need for that catharsis. Maybe you’ve recently encountered the gothic and it’s ignited something feral and greedy inside you. Maybe you’re already a fan of more recent gothic works and looking for a deeper understanding of the genre as a whole. Whatever brought you here, one of these novels will be the right one to start your descent into gothic literature’s early depths — and I’ve included links on where to read them for free at the bottom of the post.
“The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole
The original gothic novel, if you want to understand the origins of the genre then The Castle of Otranto is the place to start. It does have the benefit of being a pretty fast read, however…
It’s also an objectively bad novel. The pacing is erratic, the plot is full of holes, and its genuinely hard to believe Walpole had ever so much as spoken to a woman in his life just going off the way he wrote his female characters. Its still worth reading because of its impact on later work, and so you can understand the references other author’s both in and outside of the genre make to it, but its a disaster of a book. On the other hand it’s a fairly entertaining disaster, in the deliberately watching a bad movie sort of way; especially if you make it a group activity and take it in turns to read it out loud with a group of equally unfamiliar friends.
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
Often recommended to teenagers, Jane Eyre is one of the most accessible of the early gothic novels, so if you tend to struggle with the prose in older works she’s a great entry point to the genre. One of the most influential of the gothic romances, Jane Eyre established the figure of the governess as an archetypal gothic heroine. Filled with familiar gothic tropes like the brooding hero, mist filled countryside, and looming, isolated mansions, the story manages to be surprising (at least, if you haven’t had it spoilered for you) and is a pretty enjoyable read.
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights genuinely has something for everyone. There’s romance, tragedy, horror, analysis of oppressive social structures, drama, and the gloriously gloomy scenery of the moors standing behind it all. No-one in this book is remotely likeable, so if you’re someone who needs a relatable protagonist, or at least one you don’t want to strangle, this probably isn’t the place to start. However, if you’re someone who lives for the drama, and watching two people commit to making each other worse is your idea of a good time, then this is the one for you.
Be warned though; animal cruelty and domestic violence feature, so if those are topics you don’t want to engage with you might want to avoid.
“The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston LeRoux
This might be a great entry point for fans of the musical. I say might because in my experience there’s a fifty fifty chance they’ll absolutely love or utterly hate the book, and the same goes for book fans encountering the musical for the first time. Still, it’s got the lush, romantic aesthetics and grimy reality of the Parisian opera, intense psychological horror, and a truly terrifying villain. The overall vibes are histrionic, in an entirely enjoyable way, and the plot has twists you won’t see coming even if you are intimately familiar with the musical. The Phantom of the Opera is a great gothic starting point for readers who generally lean towards horror, enjoy social history, or fantasise about being a 18th century artistic type in France.
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley
If you’re someone who enjoys science-fiction, existential questions about the nature of humanity, and monster as metaphor for man’s own monstrosity, then Mary Shelley’s genre spanning opus is for you. A novel that leans hard toward the horror and away from the romance in gothic fiction, I didn’t find Frankenstein frightening when I read it, just incredibly, incredibly sad. It’s definitely horrifying, but not in the jump scare sleeping with the lights on way, at least in my experience. It may make you sit with uncomfortable philosophical questions in the middle of the night, which is it’s own sort of horror I suppose.
The above links are bookshop.org affiliate links, so if you purchase through them you’ll be helping me and my favourite small local bookshop. Because these novels are all out of copyright however they can also be read easily online for free at the links below;
Gothic Auntie 
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