The Gothic novel is a literary genre, which can be said to have been born with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole.

Prominent features of many gothic novels are mystery, doom, decay, old buildings with ghosts in them, madness, hereditary curses and so on.

Examples:

• The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe
• Vathek, an Arabian Tale (1786) by William Thomas Beckford
• The Monk (1796) by Matthew Lewis
• Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Robert Maturin
• Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey parodies the Gothic novel by setting up the atmosphere of doom and sweeping it away with hearty common sense and normalcy.

In England, the Gothic novel as a genre had largely played itself out by 1840. It left a lasting legacy, however, in works such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. From these, the Gothic genre strictly considered gave way to modern horror fiction.

External link

• The Gothic Literature Page