Gothic Romantic and Sensational Fiction: Classics
Explore timeless Gothic, Romantic, and Sensational fiction classics. Discover haunting tales, passionate romances, and thrilling narratives from iconic authors in this curated collection of literary masterpieces.
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Zeluco
by John Moore
"The romantic will love to shudder at Udolpho; but those of mature age, who know what human nature is, will take up again and again Dr. Moore's Zeluco." -- Anna LĂŠtitia Barbauld One of the most irredeemably evil characters in all of literature finally returns to print in the first edition of this classic novel since 1827. When Zeluco first appeared in 1789, it was hailed as an instant classic, and its author, Scottish physician John Moore, was ranked with Richardson, Smollett, and Fielding as one of the finest novelists of the eighteenth century. Influential on such writers as Burns and Byron, and selected by Anna LĂŠtitia Barbauld in 1810 for her series of the best British novels, Zeluco mysteriously fell out of print and has remained unobtainable since. Zeluco charts the career of a wicked Sicilian aristocrat who causes death and ruin to all those around him before finally meeting a horrible fate. But Zeluco is much more than an early Gothic novel featuring a monomaniacal tyrant: it is a rich panorama of life in the late eighteenth century, dealing with English and European manners and hot topics of the day, such as the abolition of slavery. Readers will be thrilled to discover this surprisingly humorous--and eminently readable--lost masterpiece in an excellent new edition by Pam Perkins. This edition features a substantial new introduction, thorough explanatory notes, and appendices containing excerpts from contemporary reactions to the novel and Moore's celebrated travel writings.
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Zofloya
by Charlotte Dacre
This is the first edition for nearly 200 years of an unduly neglected work, originally published in 1806, by an intriguing and unconventional woman writer. A Gothic tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in fifteenth-century Venice, the novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of the central character, Victoria's, intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley, it contradicts idealized stereotypes in women's writing and challenges the received idea of the Gothic genre's representation of passive, victimized women.
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The Bravo of Venice
by Matthew Lewis
In the dark alleys and back streets of Venice lurks an uncontrollable evil: Aballino, The Bravo of Venice. When the Neapolitan Count Rosalvo is called upon to rid the city of the Bravo, he is torn between his love for the Doge's niece Rosabella and a dark secret. An adaptation of J. H. D. Zschokke's popular German Romance Aballino, Der Grosse Bandit (1794, The Bravo of Venice is brought to life by the master of Gothic horror, Matthew "Monk" Lewis.
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The Monk
by Matthew Lewis
âFew could sustain the glance of his eye, at once fiery and penetratingâ Savaged by critics for its supposed profanity and obscenity, and bought in large numbers by readers eager to see whether it lived up to its lurid reputation, The Monk became a succĂšs de scandale when it was published in 1796 â not least because its author was a member of parliament and only twenty years old. It recounts the diabolical decline of Ambrosio, a Capuchin superior, who succumbs first to temptations offered by a young girl who has entered his monastery disguised as a boy, and continues his descent with increasingly depraved acts of sorcery, murder, incest and torture. Combining sensationalism with acute psychological insight, this masterpiece of Gothic fiction is a powerful exploration of how violent and erotic impulses can break through the barriers of social and moral restraint. This edition is based on the first edition of 1796, which appeared before Lewisâs revisions to avoid charges of blasphemy. In his introduction, Christopher MacLachlan discusses the novelâs place within the Gothic genre, and its themes of sexual desire and the abuse of power. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Manfroné, Or, The One-handed Monk
by Mary Anne Radcliffe
"Manfrone; or, The One-Handed Monk" (1809) opens with one of the most unforgettable scenes in all of Gothic literature when a lascivious monk enters the lovely Rosalina's room in an attempt to rape her, but suffers the gruesome severing of his hand when he is caught in the act. Yet other dangers await Rosalina: her father, the haughty Duca di Rodolpho is determined to marry her to the cruel Prince di Manfrone and imprisons her true love, Montalto, in the dungeons of his castle. And then there is the mysterious monk Grimaldi, who seems to be an ally of the Duca. What are his inscrutable plans, and is he trying to aid Rosalina or destroy her? One of the most popular of Gothic novels, "Manfrone" went through numerous editions during the 19th century and was often erroneously attributed to Ann Radcliffe. This edition includes an essay by Dale Townshend exploring the authorship of the novel as well as explanatory notes.
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Gondez the Monk
by William Henry Ireland
The first modern reprinting of Shakespeare forger and novelist Ireland's 1805 Gothic classic "Gondez the Monk" tells the tale of King Robert Bruce, who following his defeat on the field of Methven, seeks refuge in Monastery of Saint Columba on the isle of Oronza.
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Vathek
by William Beckford
Vathek (1786), originally written in French, remains one of the strangest eighteenth-century novels and one of the most difficult to classify. Perverse and grotesque comedy alternates with scenes of 'oriental' magnificence and evocative beauty in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek's journey to superb damnation among the subterranean treasures of Eblis. Underlying the elegant prose is a strong element of self-indulgent personal fantasy on the part of Beckford, youthful millionaire, dreamer, and eventually social outcast. Byron, Poe, Mallarmé, and Swinburne are some of the literary figures who have admired Vathek's imaginative power. The text follows that of the 'Third Edition' of 1816, in which Beckford extensively revised and corrected Samuel Henley's original English translations from the French. The elaborate notes retained by Beckford in 1816 are also included. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Ethelwina, Or, the House of Fitz-Auburne
by T. J. Horsley Curties
Leopold, Lord of St. Iver, sets his sights on the beautiful young Ethelwina, Countess of Auburne, and determines to possess her body and her estates. When she rebuffs his proposals of marriage, he imprisons her in his impenetrable castle in the mountains of Wales. Trapped in a dungeon in the ruined northern tower, Ethelwina will have to overcome Leopold's diabolical plots, including his intention to destroy her will by the use of potions, and his threat to rape her if she refuses to become his bride. But the dungeon holds still more terrors for Ethelwina. Inside her chamber are a bloodstained mattress and a rusty dagger, and when a vengeful spectre that seems to be the ghost of her father appears to her, she will have to solve the mystery of his fate and revenge his death! One of the finest Gothic novels of the 1790s, Ethelwina; or, The House of Fitz-Auburne (1799) has remained out of print for almost 210 years and can be found in only three libraries worldwide today. This new edition features the unabridged text of the three volume first edition along with a new introduction that reveals for the first time the details of T. J. Horsley Curties's life, a portrait of the author, and a reproduction of the frontispiece of the first edition.
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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre, the story of a young girl and her passage into adulthood, was an immediate commercial success at the time of its original publication in 1847. Its representation of the underside of domestic life and the hypocrisy behind religious enthusiasm drew both praise and bitter criticism, while Charlotte BrontĂ«âs striking expose of poor living conditions for children in charity schools as well as her poignant portrayal of the limitations faced by women who worked as governesses sparked great controversy and social debate. Jane Eyre, BrontĂ«âs best-known novel, remains an extraordinary coming-of-age narrative, and one of the great classics of literature.
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The Italian, Or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents
by Ann Ward Radcliffe
First published in 1797, The Italian is Ann Radcliffe's classic creation of Gothic romance. Set against the backdrop of the Holy Inquisition, the narrative revolves around the sinister and mysterious monk, Father Schedoni, and the ill fated lovers, Ellena Rosalba and Vincentio di Vivaldi. With a new introduction and updated notes, this edition examines the formal, historical, and political aspects of Radcliffe's most brilliant work.
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The Romance of the Forest
by Ann Ward Radcliffe
This novel is the epitome of the Gothic novel - a beautiful, orphaned heiress, a dashing hero, a dissolute, aristocratic villain and a ruined abbey deep in a great forest are combined by the author in a tale of suspense where danger lurks behind every secret trap-door.
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The Recess, Or, A Tale of Other Times
by Sophia Lee
First published in an era when most novels about young women concentrated on courtship and marriage, this novel portrays women involved in political intrigues and overseas journeys. It is set during the reign of Elizabeth I, and features as narrators, fictional daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots.
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The Two Emilys
by Sophia Lee
Although Sophia Lee is best known for her historical romance about the fictive daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots, The Recess (1783-85), her The Two Emilys (1798) is a fast-paced novel of vengeance and triumph that equally showcases her talents. In The Two Emilys, masquerade, an earthquake, bigamy, insanity, blackmail, and duels serve the demonic Emily Fitzallen in her drive for revenge on her counterpart and the novel's heroine. Emily Arden, and the man over whom they do battle, the Marquis of Lenox. Will the good Emily or the evil one prevail? Featuring a wild, improbable plot and action that ranges from Ireland and Scotland to Switzerland and Italy, The Two Emilys remains an unpredictable and thrilling Gothic tale. First published as part of Canterbury Tales, Sophia Lee's collaboration with her sister Harriet, The Two Emilys has been out of print for more than 150 years. It returns to print in a scholarly edition, introduced and annotated by Julie Shaffer, and featuring a wealth of additional materials, including contemporary reviews of the novel, excerpts from related eighteenth century works, a detailed bibliography, and more.
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Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
No novel in English has given more pleasure than Pride and Prejudiceâone of the great classics in literature. Critics in every generation reexamine and reinterpret it, but the rest of us simply fall in love with itâand with its wonderfully charming and intelligent heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. We are captivated not only by Pride and Prejudice's romantic suspense but also by the fascinations of the world we visit in its pages. The life of the English country gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century is made as real to us as our own, not only by Jane Austenâs wit and feeling but by her subtle observation of the way people behave in society and how we are true or treacherous to each other and ourselves.
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Persuasion
by Jane Austen
Jane Austen's beloved and subtly subversive final novel of romantic tension and second chances. Now a motion picture from Netflix starring Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding, and a TikTok Book Club Pick. At twenty-Âseven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Bride of Lammermoor
by Walter Scott
The plans of Edgar, Master of Ravenswood to regain his ancient family estate from the corrupt Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland are frustrated by the complexities of the legal and political situations following the 1707 Act of Union, and by his passion for his enemy's beautiful daughter Lucy. First published in 1819, this intricate and searching romantic tragedy offers challenging insights into emotional and sexual politics, and demonstrates the shrewd way in which Scott presented his work as historical document, entertainment, and work of art.
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The Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
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In a Glass Darkly
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by unknown publisher
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The House by the Churchyard
by Sheridan Le Fanu
Set in the village of Chapelizod, near Dublin, in the 1760s, the story opens with the accidental disinterment of an old skull in the churchyard, and an eerie late-night funeral. This discovery relates to murders, both recent and historical whose repercussions disrupt the complacent pace of village affairs.
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Uncle Silas
by Sheridan Le Fanu
LeFanu's Silas is the dark doppelganger to his brother Austin Ruthyn. When Austin dies and his daughter Maud is sent to live with her brooding uncle, the creeping, horrible nature of Silas' character unfolds.
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Cousin Bette
by Honoré de Balzac
Cousin Bette (1846) is considered to be Balzac's last great novel, and a key work in his Human Comedy. Set in the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s, it is a complex tale of the devastating effect of violent jealousy and sexual passion. Against a meticulously detailed backdrop of a post-Napoleonic France struggling with massive industrial and economic change, Balzac's characters span many classes of society, from impoverished workers and wealthy courtesans to successful businessmen and official dignitaries. The tragic outcome of the novel is relieved by occasional flashes of ironic comedy and the emergence of a younger generation which has come to terms with the new political and econimic climate. This new translation by Sylvia Raphael has an Introduction by David Bellos which sets the novel in its social, historical, and literary context. - ;This new translation has an Introduction which sets the novel in its social, historical, and literary context. -
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The Nocturnal Minstrel
by Eleanor Sleath
Baroness Gertrude learns that her husband has been killed in a war against France, making her a rich widow. Suitors vie for the widow's hand in marriage, which she refuses to contemplate. Her one and only love was her husband Baron Geofrey. One night she hears music coming from the woods that reminds her of her husband, but is unable to find its source. Deception now follows the widow, who is her friend, does her husband's spirit walks the halls, does his spirit want her to marry, who can she trust?
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The Orphan of the Rhine
by Eleanor Sleath
Eleanor Sleath was a British author wellknown for her 1798 novel The Orphan of the Rhine. The novel, subtitled A Romance, was published in four volumes. It was listed as one of the seven "horrid novels" by Jane Austen in her novel Northanger Abbey. It was part of a brief but popular vogue of German tales, a fashion criticised in the Critical Review in 1807. Although most gothic novels took a resolutely anti Roman Catholic stance, the author of this novel was herself a Catholic. Her works include: Who's the Murderer?; or, Mysterious Fortunes (1802), Nocturnal Minstrel; or, The Spirit of the Wood (2 volumes) (1810) and Glenowen; or, The Fairy Palace (1815).
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The Haunted Palace, Or the Horrors of Ventoliene
by Mrs. R. P. M. Yorke
Beneath the ruins of the Palace at Ventoliene lies a dark and diabolic society. When Edward Fitzallan accidently stumbles upon their secret the forces and good and evil gather for one final battle for his soul. Aided by a Robber captain and a renegade priest, Edward must escape the horrors of Ventoliene and find love before he is lost forever.
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The Castle of Berry Pomeroy
by Edward Montague
Edward Montague adapts the legends surrounding the castle into a Gothic tale of horror, jealousy, and revenge. The Lady Elinor de Pomeroy, envious that her sister Matilda has won possession of the castle and the love of the handsome De Clifford, decides to have her murdered. She enlists the aid of Father Bertrand, one of the blackest villlains ever to appear in a Gothic novel. But Matilda's death is just the beginning. Her spectre appears, bringing terror to Elinor and Bertrand, whose ambition and fear of discovery lead them to commit more and more murders. The body count rises and the horror increases, but will Matilda's spectre lead to the discovery and punishment of the villains? -- Book jacket flap.
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Secresy - Second Edition
by Eliza Fenwick
Secresy was Eliza Fenwickâs only work for adultsâa fact that may help to explain why this extraordinary novel has been so thoroughly overlooked. On one level this is a book that presents fascinating challenges to traditional structures of class and gender. Whereas Mr. Valmont, the villain of the piece, rejects merely the surface forms of fashionable society, the story of his niece Sibella and her friend Caroline implicitly rejects the substance as well as the trappings of a system that rested on class privilege and on female dependence. Secresy is also, though, a remarkable novel of human relationships: of sexuality (Sibellaâs pregnancy is the occasion for the secrecy that gives the book its title), and of romantic love, but also the female friendship between Sibella and Caroline that is very much at the heart of the book. The relationshipsâand the grand themesâare expressed through an epistolary technique through which Fenwick (in the editorâs words) shows "a breadth of sympathy which can find comedic pleasure even in what is disapproved.â
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The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey and the Child of Mystery
by Sarah Wilkinson
This Zittaw edition brings together two of Sarah Wilkinson's forgotten novels: The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey and The Child of Mystery. Though long forgotten and marginalized as a purveyor of literary rubbish, Sarah Wilkinson's work nevertheless belongs to that body of work which is representative of female authors in the 19th century. The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey and The Child of Mystery illustrate the versatility of Wilkinson's pen: one a Gothic novel with decaying buildings and terrifying spectres, and the other, a domestic novel of high fashion based on recent events in London. This edition includes an introduction by Franz J Potter, Wilkinson's letters to the Royal Literary Fund and a complete list of her works.
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Charles Brockden Brown: Three Gothic Novels (LOA #103)
by Charles Brockden Brown
An elderly mystic dies of spontaneous combustion in a secret temple. A young man is haunted by voices instructing him to slaughter his wife and children. A sleepwalker undergoes a series of violent adventures in the wilderness. These haunted, dreamlike scenes define the fictional world of Charles Brockden Brown, Americaâs first professional novelist. Published in the final years of the eighteenth century, Brownâs startlingly prophetic novels are a virtual rĂ©sumĂ© of themes that would constantly recur in American literature: madness and murder, suicide and religious obsession, the seduction of innocence and the dangers of wilderness and settlement alike. In Three Gothic Novels, The Library of America collects the most significant of Brownâs works. Wieland; or The Transformation (1798), his novel of a religious fanatic preyed upon by a sinister ventriloquist, is often considered his masterpiece. A relentlessly dark exploration of guilt, deception, and compulsion, it creates a sustained mood of irrational terror in the midst of the Pennsylvania countryside. In Arthur Mervyn; or Memoirs of the Year 1793 (1799), Brown draws on his own experience to create indelible scenes of Philadelphia devastated by a yellow fever epidemic, while telling the story of a young man caught in the snares of a professional swindler. Edgar Huntly; or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) fuses traditional Gothic themes with motifs drawn from the American wilderness, in a series of eerily unreal adventures that test the limits of the protagonistâs self-knowledge. All three novels reveal Brown as the pioneer of a major vein of American writing, a novelist whose literary heirs include Poe, Hawthorne, Faulkner, and the whole tradition of horror and noir from Cornell Woolrich to Stephen King. This volume also includes a newly researched chronology of Brownâs life, explanatory notes, and an essay on the texts. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nationâs literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, Americaâs best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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Ormond
by Charles Brockden Brown
Brown is often called the first American novelist. Originally published in 1799, Ormond was inspired by enlightenment philosophers and Gothic writers. The novel engages with many of the periodâs popular debates about womenâs education, marriage, and the morality of violence, while the plot revolves around the Gothic themes of seduction, murder, incest, impersonation, romance and disease. Set in post-revolutionary Philadelphia, Ormond examines the prospects of the struggling nation by tracing the experiences of Constantia, a young virtuous republican who struggles to survive when her fatherâs business is ruined by a confidence man, and her friends and neighbors are killed by a yellow fever epidemic.
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The House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
An old mansion in Salem, moss-covered and gabled, broods over the destiny of a distinguished but troubled New England family.
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Demons of the Night
by Joan C. Kessler
An anthology of thrillers and chillers from 19th Century France. In Theophile Gautier's The Dead in Love, a man develops an obsessive passion for a woman who has returned from the grave, while Honore de Balzac's The Red Inn is on a crime which is committed by one person in thought and another in deed.
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The Devil in Love
by Jacques Cazotte
Yet The Devil in Love reaches beyond, as its sophisticated play of gender shifts transforms a chronicle of fatal attraction into an ironic commentary on social and psychological mores.
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The Robbers and Wallenstein
by Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was one of the most influential of all playwrights, the author of deeply moving dramas that explored human fears, desires and ideals. Written at the age of twenty-one, The Robbers was his first play. A passionate consideration of liberty, fraternity and deep betrayal, it quickly established his fame throughout Germany and wider Europe. Wallenstein, produced nineteen years later, is regarded as Schiller's masterpiece: a deeply moving exploration of a flawed general's struggle to bring the Thirty Years War to an end against the will of his Emperor. Depicting the deep corruption caused by constant fighting between Protestants and Catholics, it is at once a meditation on the unbounded possible strength of humanity, and a tragic recognition of what can happen when men allow themselves to be weak.
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The Devil's Elixirs
by E. T. A. Hoffmann
The charismatic monk Medardus becomes implicated in a deadly mystery against his will. As he travels towards Rome he wrestles with the enigma of his own identity while pursued by his murderous doppelganger. The monk's only hope for salvation lies with the beautiful Aurelie; but in order to escape the curse which lies over his family, he must evade the sinister powers of the living and the dead. In this lively and disturbing gothic tale, Hoffmann combines elements of the fantastic and the sublime to analyse the seductive ambiguities of art and the deeply divided nature of the human imagination.
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The Nun's Curse
by J. H. Riddell
Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906) who also wrote under the pseudonym F. G. Tafford, was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period. She was born Charlotte Eliza Lawson Cowan in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland. The author of 56 books, novels and short stories, she was also part owner and editor of the St. James's Magazine, one of the most prestigious literary magazines of the 1860s. She was the author of many ghost stories, publishing them under the name of Mrs. J. H. Riddell. Amongst her works are The Moors and the Fens (1858), City and Suburb (1861), George Geith of Fen Court (1864), Above Suspicion (1876), Berna Boyle (1882), Mitre Court (1885) and The Head of the Firm (1892).