Gothic fiction
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Gothic fiction, often referred to as Gothic horror, is a literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name of the genre is derived from the Renaissance-era use of the word "gothic", as a pejorative te
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) has come to define Gothic fiction in the Romantic period. Frontispiece to 1831 edition shown.
The ruins of Wolf's Crag castle in Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor (1819)
Strawberry Hill, southwest London, an English villa in the "Gothic Revival" style, built by Gothic writer Horace Walpole
The Gothic Temple folly in Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire, built as a ruin in 1741, designed by James Gibbs
The Castle of Otranto
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The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole. First published in 1764, it is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word 'Gothic' to the novel i
Title page from the second edition
Illustration from a 1794 German edition
Portrait of Horace Walpole by Joshua Reynolds, 1756