Lasciate ogni speranza, tu che legge.

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"We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things."

— Dracula, Bram Stoker




A little time after creating my Classics Club List I began to ponder the titles I'd included, to muse upon the genres, to think of myself submerged in their atmospheres, and discovered an in-and-of-itself disturbing lack of . . . disturbance. The du Mauriers, Mary Shelley, Emily BrontĂ«,—where Mrs. Radcliffe? M. R. James? Where Gorey and Poe? I then peered inwards: what, as Catherine Morland and her friends would say, horrid novels did I know of? Disgusted, I determined to create (with no particular chronological guidelines)

A To-Be-Read List of

Gothic Tomes, Horrific Tales, Eerie Mysteries, & Unsettling Volumes

Date Created: August 2nd, 2025

0/50



1. "A Ghost Story For Christmas" Stories, Various — ongoing
2. Trilby, George du Maurier
3. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
4. Mrs. de Winter, Susan Hill
5. "Jamaica Inn", Daphne du Maurier
6. The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe
7. The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents: A Romance, Ann Radcliffe
8. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
9. King Lear, William Shakespeare
10. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
11. The Beetle, Richard Marsh
12. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
13. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
14. The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
15. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
16. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
17. Selected Tales, Edgar Allan Poe — Oxford World's Classics
18. Zastrozzi, Percy Bysshe Shelley
19. St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, Percy Bysshe Shelley
20. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
21. The Haunted Dolls' House, M. R. James
22. Amphigorey Too/Also/Again, Edward Gorey
23. London After Midnight Script, Marie Coolidge-Rask
24. Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Maturin
25. The Albigenses, Charles Marturin
26. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
27. Castle of Wolfenbach, Eliza Parsons
28. Clermont, Regina Maria Roche
29. The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale, Eliza Parsons
30. The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest, "Lawrence Flammenberg" (pseudonym for Karl Friedrich Kahlert; translated by "Peter Teuthold," pseudonym for Peter Will)
31. The Midnight Bell, Francis Lathom
32. The Orphan of the Rhine, Eleanor Sleath
33. Horrid Mysteries — an abridged translation by Peter Will of Carl Grosse's The Genius
34. The Castle of the Carpathians, Jules Verne
35. The White People and Other Weird Stories, Arthur Machen
36. "The Canterville Ghost", Oscar Wilde
37. Vera, Elizabeth von Arnim
38. Dracula's Guest, Bram Stoker
39. Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood, James Malcolm Rymer & Thomas Peckett Prest
40. Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffman to Hodgson, ed. Darryl Jones — Oxford World's Classics
41. The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce, selected by Michael Newton
42. The Old English Baron, Clara Reeve
43. Körkarlen (Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!), Selma Lagerlöf; trans. William Frederick Harvey
44. Les Mains d'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac), Maurice Renard
45. Black Spirits & White: A Book of Ghost Stories, Ralph Adams Cram
46. A Strange Story, Edward Bulwer Lytton
47. Eugene Aram, Edward Bulwer Lytton
48. The Watcher And Other Weird Stories, J. Sheridan Le Fanu
49. Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas De Quincey
50. Klosterheim; or, The Masque, Thomas De Quincey




Previously completed titles deserving note:


1. The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole
2. Carmilla, Sheridan Le Fanu
3. Dracula, Bram Stoker
4. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
6. Macbeth, William Shakespeare
7. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
8. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
9. "The Body Snatcher", Robert Louis Stevenson
10. "The Suicide Club", Robert Louis Stevenson — three short stories following one over-arching tale of intrigue, adventure, and justice, becoming gradually less and less strange; don't be too alarmed by the title. Just a little. The anthology film Unheimliche Geschichten (Eerie Tales), 1919, brought me to this; it's fantastic! (Thank you, Silent-ology!!)
11. The Vampyre, John William Polidori
12. "Fragment of a Novel", George, Lord Byron
13. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
14. Count Magnus, and Other Ghost Stories, M. R. James
15. The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Edward Gorey
16. Amphigorey, Edward Gorey
17. "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
18. "The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain", Edward Bulwer-Lytton
19. "The Secret of the Growing Gold", Bram Stoker
20. "The Whithered Arm", Thomas Hardy
21. "The Superstitious Man's Story", Thomas Hardy




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