The Gothic Classics Starter Pack

The Best Order to Read Gothic Classics

Read the gothic classics from modern prose to 19th-century prose:

1. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)
2. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
3. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
4. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
5. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
6. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
7. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

In this order, each book prepares you for the next, so old-fashioned sentences won't stop you from finding out whether you like the genre.

How This Pack Is Ordered

There are three things that can make an older novel harder to read:

• Sentences. Long sentences with multiple clauses slow you down a lot. Just looking at the Project Gutenberg texts, The Picture of Dorian Gray averages about 12 words per sentence, while Frankenstein averages about 23. Those sentences are longer than some of my school essays!
• Structure. Letters, diaries, stories within stories, and unreliable narrators all require you to keep track of who is speaking.
• Length. Though this can be kind of misleading: a long book with modern sentences is easier than a short one using dated sentences.

That's why the shortest book here comes seventh: The Turn of the Screw can be pretty difficult to read.

Books One to Four: The On-Ramp

Three of these four are 20th-century novels, the fourth is a Victorian novel.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

Merricat Blackwood is 18 and lives with her sister and their uncle in the family house, six years after the rest of the family was poisoned at dinner. The whole village hates them.

Est. read: 3h 30 min

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Why it's first: It's the shortest of the three modern books, and it's a good test of whether you enjoy the mood before committing to anything longer. Free: no.

The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

A researcher of the supernatural rents Hill House for the summer with three companions, and the house takes a special interest in one of them.

Est. read: 4h 31 min

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Why it's second: It introduces the big house with a secret, which makes a return in Rebecca, The Turn of the Screw, and Jane Eyre. Free: no.

Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

A shy young woman marries a wealthy widower and moves into Manderley, his estate on the English coast, where his dead first wife still seems to run the house.

Est. read: 10h 42 min

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Why it's third: It's the first long book (about 153,000 words), but its sentences are modern and its suspense keeps you turning pages. Free: no.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

A beautiful young man's portrait ages and shows every cruelty he commits, while his own face never changes.

Est. read: 5h 32 min

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Why it's fourth: It may be your first Victorian novel (don't worry, most of it is dialogue). It has the shortest sentences of the five free books, and Lord Henry's one-liners carry you along. Free: yes.

Books Five to Eight

From here on, the sentences get longer. Old-fashioned English slows me down even more because English isn't my first language. Read these slower than what feels natural. When a passage doesn't make sense to you, mark it and keep reading (more tricks for difficult books here).

Dracula

by Bram Stoker

A young English lawyer travels to Transylvania to help a count buy a house near London. Letters, diaries, and newspaper clippings tell the story that follows.

Est. read: 11h 16 min

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Why it's fifth: It's long (about 161,000 words), but it's told through letters, diary entries, and newspaper clippings, so it breaks into short pieces you can pause between. Free: yes.

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

A young student builds a living creature from parts of dead bodies, then runs from it. The story is told through an Arctic explorer's letters.

Est. read: 5h 28 min

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Why it's sixth: It's about half as long as Dracula, but harder to read. It has the longest sentences of the five free books. It's a story inside a story inside letters, so you always have to keep track of who is speaking. Free: yes.

The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

A young governess takes charge of two orphaned children at a country house and becomes convinced that the ghosts of two former servants are after them.

Est. read: 3h

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Why it's seventh: It's a little harder to read because the story comes from a manuscript read aloud years later, with sentences that often trail off. Free: yes.

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

An orphan survives a cruel childhood and a strict charity school, then becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where strange laughter comes from the third floor.

Est. read: 13h 6 min

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Why it's eighth: It's the longest book in this pack (about 187,000 words), but after the first seven, that probably won't stop you. At about 13 hours, it's worth planning a long read (or two) for it. Free: yes.

Five of These Are Free

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Turn of the Screw, and Jane Eyre are in the public domain, so their ebooks are free. I've downloaded free classics from Apple Books and Project Gutenberg before. Project Gutenberg has the biggest archive, but formatting varies from book to book. Standard Ebooks makes free editions of the same books, proofread and typeset for e-readers.

The other three are still under copyright. Try your library first (many lend ebooks too), then look for secondhand copies if you don't want to buy them new.

How Long the Whole Pack Takes

All eight add up to about 815,000 words. That's about 57 hours at an average pace of 238 words per minute, or about 78 hours at my pace of 175. I calculated them by word count because page counts change with the edition: English editions of Dracula on Open Library can range from about 200 to nearly 800 pages.

Word counts are from Standard Ebooks for the five free books and from TeachingBooks for Hill House and Rebecca. The estimate for We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my rough approximation.

At 30 minutes a day, reading all eight take almost four months at an average pace (about five at mine). They make a nice stack for cozy autumn or winter reading (if that's a thing where you live). You don't have to read all eight this October: the first two take about 8 hours together, or 16 days at 30 minutes a day. The rest can wait for later.

For your own numbers, open the "Get your reading estimate" link on any book card. The Reading Time Calculator opens with that book's details filled in (it counts 250-word pages, so the page number may not match your copy). The method behind it is explained in How Long Does It Take to Read a Book.

Start Easy

I only read classics when school assigned them (like Kafka's Die Verwandlung in German class), and I knew Dracula and Frankenstein only from their film adaptations. If that sounds like you, start at number one.

Doing the spooky season reading challenge? The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story, The Haunting of Hill House is set in a weird house, and each of the five free books ticks both "published before 1900" and "a public-domain classic". For me, Dracula or Frankenstein would also check "a book you've only ever seen the movie of".

If you'd rather try another genre, check out horror books for people who hate horror.

Start one of these books tonight and see for yourself whether the genre is for you.