Gothic Tales of History

This collection features classic Gothic novels that intertwine elements of history with dark, atmospheric storytelling. Each work explores themes of love, revenge, and the supernatural, set against richly detailed historical backdrops, inviting readers into a world where the past and the eerie collide.

Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

par George W. M. Reynolds Lu par clarinetcarrot 4.4
Wagner is a poor, lonely old shepherd living on the edge of the Black Forest. In a devil's pact he gains youth and wealth for the price of t…

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

par James Hogg Lu par LibriVox Volunteers 4.3
An early example of a psychological mystery and modern crime fiction, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner details the …

Northanger Abbey

par Jane Austen Lu par LibriVox Volunteers 4.4
Northanger Abbey follows seventeen-year-old Gothic novel aficionado Catherine Morland and family friends Mr. and Mrs. Allen as they visit Ba…

The Castle of Otranto

par Horace Walpole Lu par Thomas A. Copeland 4.3
The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel, a genre appealing to a taste for terror and set in a remote past when prodigies…

The Landlady

par Fyodor Dostoyevsky Lu par Yuqing 4.1
Everything changed when Ordynov, a secluded young thinker, stepped out of his old lodgings in search of another corner. The ailing landlord …

The Sorrows of Satan

par Marie Corelli Lu par Lisa Statler 4.6
In this 1895 Faustian novel by British author Marie Corelli, we follow the journey of Geoffrey Tempest. Initially a starving and penniless w…

The Statement of Stella Maberly

par F. Anstey Lu par Anne Fletcher 4.4
From childhood Stella Maberly has been violently wilful and jealous, yet certain of her own superiority. She can be loving and friendly, but…

Villette

par Charlotte Brontë Lu par Leanne Fortune 4.5
A quiet, self-reliant, intelligent, 23-year-old woman, Lucy has, as Miss Ginevra Fanshawe asserts, "no attractive accomplishments – no …

Dracula

par Bram Stoker Lu par Peter John Keeble 4.7
Dracula as written by Bram Stoker in 1897 was not the first depiction of vampires and other such creatures, Gothic horror stories had been a…

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus

par Mary Shelley Lu par Thomas A. Copeland 4.7
A mentally unstable genius, Victor Frankenstein, inspired by the dreams of ancient alchemists and empowered by modern science, creates a hum…

The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne

par Ann Radcliffe Lu par Lauren Randall 4.4
Ann Radcliffe is the founder of the gothic novel. This novel is no exception. The wicked baron murdered the good earl's father twelve years …

The Romance of the Forest

par Ann Radcliffe Lu par LibriVox Volunteers 4.3
A Gothic novel famously mentioned by Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey" as an inspiration for the romantic ideals and supernatural …

Dead Love Has Chains

par Mary Elizabeth Braddon Lu par Celine Major 4.2
We see another facet of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's amazing talent in Dead Love Has Chains, written in her seventies. Focusing on character and…

Uncle Silas

par Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Lu par Lynne T 4.6
Maud Ruthyn, the young, naive heroine, has a governess who is an enigmatic older woman, a liar, bully, and spy, who takes a dark secret with…

Wieland; Or, The Transformation

par Charles Brockden Brown Lu par Karen Joan Kohoutek 4
The lives of a prosperous, intellectual family are disrupted when they meet the mysterious Carwin. Set in the period before the Revolutionar…

The Old Ladies

par Hugh Walpole Lu par David Wales 4.4
“Quite a number of years ago there was an old rickety building on the rock above Seatown in Polchester, and it was one of a number in an old…

Hans of Iceland

par Victor Hugo Lu par Sonia 4.7
Hans of Iceland was written in 1821 and is the very first novel written by young Victor, years before he became the great Hugo. It has all t…

Wuthering Heights

par Emily Brontë Lu par LibriVox Volunteers 4.5
The story centers on the all-encompassing, passionate, but ultimately doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this un…