Genre

Gothic Fiction

Also Known As the Gothic novel

Speculative and Fantastic Fiction

Gothic fiction combines horror, romance and the supernatural, typically set among ruined castles, abbeys and other haunted architecture that stage its themes of imprisonment, decay and transgression. Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, published anonymously as a purported medieval translation on Christmas Eve 1764 and acknowledged as Walpole's own invention in the 1765 second edition, is credited as the first Gothic novel and the genre's founding work. Gothic fiction developed alongside Romanticism, dramatizing the movement's fascination with the sublime and its suspicion of Enlightenment rationality through supernatural terror rather than argument; its conventions, hidden identities, secret passages, persecuted heroines and ancestral curses, recur from eighteenth century England through the American Gothic tradition.

Facts

Place of Origin

England, with the first work labelled Gothic being Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. 1

Notable Example

Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, alongside Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. 1

Defining Trait

An atmosphere of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. 1

FAQs

Which well-known works count as Gothic fiction besides The Castle of Otranto?

Carmilla, Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray all follow Walpole's Otranto in the Gothic tradition.

After Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, the first work labelled Gothic, the tradition grew through Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is a further notable example, and the atlas also lists The Picture of Dorian Gray among the genre's works. What ties them together is an atmosphere of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.

Connections

Associated With

Dark Romanticism

Romanticism

Gothic fiction arose as a dark, supernatural current within Romanticism, sharing its fascination with the sublime and its suspicion of Enlightenment rationality.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encompasses Form

Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novel

Penny Dreadful

Sensation Novel

Southern Gothic

Features Author

As I Lay Dying

Source As I Lay Dying (Wikipedia)

Beloved

Scholarship reads Beloved through Gothic convention (the haunted house at 124 Bluestone Road, the returned dead) applied to the history of American slavery, a Feminine or Southern Gothic rather than the novel's primary classification.

Source Toni Morrison and the Gothic (The Gothic Library)

Bram Stoker

Source Wikipedia: Bram Stoker

Carmilla

Source Carmilla (Wikipedia)

Dracula

Source Wikipedia: Dracula

Edgar Allan Poe

Tales including The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart place Poe among the genre's central figures.

Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature

Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the genre's founding work; Walpole's own added subtitle, A Gothic Story, named it.

Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature

Jane Eyre

Source Jane Eyre (Wikipedia)

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein (1818) draws directly on the Gothic tradition Walpole founded, with its isolated settings and horror at the unnatural.

Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray already in-genre Gothic Fiction; Wilde himself carried no in-genre edge to it.

Source Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia)

Rebecca

Source Rebecca (novel) (Wikipedia)

Shirley Jackson

Source Wikipedia: Shirley Jackson

Stephen King

Source Wikipedia: Stephen King

The Castle of Otranto

The genre's founding work.

Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature

The Fall of the House of Usher

Source Wikipedia: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source Wikipedia: The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Source The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Wikipedia)

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Sound and the Fury

Source The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)

The Turn of the Screw

Source The Turn of the Screw (Wikipedia)

The Woman in White

Source The Woman in White (novel) (Wikipedia)

To Kill a Mockingbird

Source To Kill a Mockingbird (Wikipedia)

Wuthering Heights

Source Wikipedia: Wuthering Heights

Influenced

Horror Fiction

Source Gothic Fiction (Wikipedia)

Sources

1. Gothic Fiction (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)

Introduction
Gothic fiction is characterised by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.
Lead section
The first work to be labelled as Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, later subtitled A Gothic Story.
Lead section, third paragraph
Later, Gothic fiction evolved through well-known works like Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, and The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh.
Influenced: Horror Fiction, lead section, on horror as a branch of Gothic