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

by George W. M. Reynolds Read by 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

by James Hogg Read by 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

by Jane Austen Read by 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

by Horace Walpole Read by 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

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read by 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

by Marie Corelli Read by 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

by F. Anstey Read by 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

by Charlotte Brontë Read by 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

by Bram Stoker Read by 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

by Mary Shelley Read by 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

by Ann Radcliffe Read by 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

by Ann Radcliffe Read by 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

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Read by 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

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Read by 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

by Charles Brockden Brown Read by 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

by Hugh Walpole Read by 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

by Victor Hugo Read by 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

by Emily Brontë Read by 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…