Spring '25 💐

Masterpost of Free Gothic Literature & Theory

Classics Vathek by William Beckford Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë The Woman in White  & The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu The Turn of the Screw by Henry James The Monk by Matthew Lewis The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin The Vampyre; a Tale by John Polidori Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Dracula by Bram Stoker The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Short Stories and Poems An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience by William Blake The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Pre-Gothic Beowulf The Divine Comedy  by Dante Alighieri A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Paradise Lost by John Milton Macbeth by William Shakespeare Oedipus, King of Thebes by Sophocles The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

Gothic-Adjacent Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood Jane Eyre & Villette by Charlotte Brontë Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems by Coleridge and Wordsworth The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens The Idiot & Demons (The Possessed) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas Moby-Dick by Herman Melville The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

Historical Theory and Background The French Revolution of 1789 by John S. C. Abbott Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. Bradley The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance by Edith Birkhead On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle Demonology and Devil-Lore by Moncure Daniel Conway Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism by Inman and Newton On Liberty by John Stuart Mill The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle by Frederick Wright

Academic Theory Introduction: Replicating Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture by Will Abberley Viewpoint: Transatlantic Scholarship on Victorian Literature and Culture by Isobel Armstrong Theories of Space and the Nineteenth-Century Novel by Isobel Armstrong The Higher Spaces of the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel by Mark Blacklock The Shipwrecked salvation, metaphor of penance in the Catalan gothic by Marta Nuet Blanch Marching towards Destruction: the Crowd in Urban Gothic by Christophe Chambost Women, Power and Conflict: The Gothic heroine and “Chocolate-box Gothic” by Avril Horner Psychos’ Haunting Memories: A(n) (Un)common Literary Heritage by Maria Antónia Lima ‘Thrilled with Chilly Horror’: A Formulaic Pattern in Gothic Fiction by Aguirre Manuel The terms “Gothic” and “Neogothic” in the context of Literary History by O. V. Razumovskaja  The Female Vampires and the Uncanny Childhood by Gabriele Scalessa Curating Gothic Nightmares by Heather Tilley Elizabeth Bowen, Modernism, and the Spectre of Anglo-Ireland by James F. Wurtz Hesitation, Projection and Desire: The Fictionalizing ‘as if…’ in Dostoevskii’s Early Works by Sarah J. Young Intermediality and polymorphism of narratives in the Gothic tradition by Ihina Zoia

readings: essays & articles

reassuring ghosts and haunted houses

fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds

what people around the world dream about

poet and philosopher david whyte on anger, forgiveness, and what maturity really means

oranges are orange, salmon are salmon

how memories persist where bodies and even brains do not

the avant-garde musical legacy of the moomins

the weight of our living: on hope, fire escapes, and visible desperation

disturbed minds and disruptive bodies

what is better ー a happy life or a meaningful one?

after my dad died, i started sending him emails. months later, someone wrote me back

on the igbo art of storytelling

what the caves are trying to tell us

promethean beasts — how animal uses of fire help illuminate human pyrocognition

the art of loving and losing female friends

on memorizing poetry

the ecological imagination of hayao miyazaki

reading in the age of constant distraction

holly warburton illustrates tender moments of love and light

romancing the fig: what one fruit can tell us about love, life and human civilization

mystery and birds: 5 ways to practice poetry

can a plant remember? this one seems to — here's the evidence

why female cannibals frighten and fascinate

when you give a tree an email adress

fear not — horror movies build community and emotional resilience

please don’t spend your life convincing yourself that love or joy is reserved for the idealized version of you that only exists in the future

𝔠𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔬𝔯 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰

Good Girl and Other Yearnings, Isabelle Correa

i think love is when i put myself to bed even when im tired, and i carry myself up the stairs even though my knees ache. and i think love is when i buy myself a coffee when im broke, and i know that ill get myself back later. and i think love is letting myself love someone, even though i am so scared. love is a heavy thing that carries you as much as you carry it.

nothing to add to this you said it all..

Me *unprovoked at any time of the day*: YOU KILLED MY SHEEP ??? MY FAVOURITE SHEEP! WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DEAL A PAIN SO DEEP? DON'T YOU KNOW THE PAIN YOU SOW IS THE PAIN YOU REAP????

Sometimes the grief really is love persevering huh