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50 Classic Gothic Works You Should Read: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Black Cat, The Picture Of Dorian Gray...

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The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
The History of Caliph Vathek - William Beckford
The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe
Caleb Williams - William Godwin
Wieland: or, The Transformation - Charles Brockden Brown
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Melmoth the Wanderer (Lock and Key Version) - Charles Robert Maturin
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg
St. John's Eve - Nikolai Gogol
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin
Berenice - Edgar Allan Poe
Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Nose - Nikolai Gogol
The Minister's Black Veil - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Ligeia - E. A. Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher - E. A. Poe
The Masque of the Red Death - E. A. Poe
The Oval Portrait - E. A. Poe
The Pit and the Pendulum - E. A. Poe
The Black Cat - E. A. Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart - E. A. Poe
Rappaccini's Daughter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Double - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Varney the Vampire - James Malcom Rymer
Villette - Charlotte Brontë
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Uncle Silas - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Damned (Là-bas) - Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Trilby - George du Maurier
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Beetle - Richard Marsh
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
The Real Thing - Henry James
The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson
The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
The Lair of the White Worm - Bram Stoker
The Outsider - Howard Phillips Lovecraft

11767 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2017

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About the author

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

2,411 books8,954 followers
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in her own lifetime, though reviewers often missed the political edge to her novels. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered only as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. It was not until 1989, when Emily Sunstein published her prizewinning biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, that a full-length scholarly biography analyzing all of Shelley's letters, journals, and works within their historical context was published.

The well-meaning attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory through the censoring of letters and biographical material contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in the later years of her life added to this impression.

The eclipse of Mary Shelley's reputation as a novelist and biographer meant that, until the last thirty years, most of her works remained out of print, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. She was seen as a one-novel author, if that. In recent decades, however, the republication of almost all her writings has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her voracious reading habits and intensive study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's recognition of herself as an author has also been recognized; after Percy's death, she wrote about her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea". Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Rebel.
2,654 reviews
February 5, 2019
Fantastic

I have always loved Dracula, Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray. This is the first time I'v read The Black Cat and I wasn't disappointed.
83 reviews
September 14, 2020
What a fabulous collection of old horror stories!

You can't go wrong with these collection stories! I have wanted to read so many of these stories but didn't want to purchase them separately since many of them are short stories! I can't get enough of the old victorian horror stories!
Profile Image for Lisa.
133 reviews13 followers
August 21, 2019
I haven't read all 50. But I've read many and most of them are good reads. A few duds but this collection is well worth the small price.
Profile Image for Dan Brand.
Author 10 books2 followers
September 21, 2024
It's cheap, and all the major classics are here. Of course, some are overrated. Others haven't aged well. Still, great value for fans of old-timey horror.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews