Gothic Classics

Visions have always been...my pasture. I almost think there is no wisdom comparable to that of exchanging the realities of life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old histories take one back into centuries that cannot disappoint. I waked one morning from a dream of which all I could recover was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.

Extraviado en una tormenta en un rocoso páramo inglés, un amable viajero llamado Lockwood queda fascinado con la historia que le narra Nelly acerca de Cumbres Borrascosas, una lóbrega mansión cercana. Mientras el viento ruge en el exterior, el fatigado visitante escucha la triste historia de Heathcliff, un criado, y su inocente amor por Cathy, un espíritu libre que nunca llegó a hacer realidad su fiera pasión por él, porque cuando Heathcliff volvió en su busca después de mucho tiempo intentando hacer fortuna, se encontró a Cathy ya casada con un joven de la alta sociedad.

After receiving a letter from his boyhood friend that he is suffering from some sort of debilitating illness, a man feels compelled to travel to a reclusive mansion to assist him. He learns that his friend and his deathly-ill sister are the last in the Usher line, slowly collapsing into madness. The Gothic mansion seems to have a bizarre metaphysical connection with the brother and sister, and there are incredibly strange occurrences that continue to happen late at night. Will this well-meaning friend survive another night in this macabre Gothic house of horror?

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a Gothic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in the December 1844. It is about Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in Padua, Italy, who grows a garden of poisonous plants. He brings up his daughter to tend the plants, and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others.

Erik is an accomplished composer and musician whose great unfinished work, Don Juan Triumphant, is described as breathtakingly beautiful by the one person he allows to hear it. Erik is an object of pity, whose face has been disfigured from birth, causing him to hide behind a silk mask; and he is hopelessly in love with a young woman. He can never seriously hope she will love him back.

El Hombre de Arena (Der Sandmann) es el cuento más célebre de E.T.A. Hoffmann. Publicado en 1817 en sus Cuentos nocturnos (Nachtstücke), es el cuento más representativo del máximo autor del género del romanticismo negro (Schwarze Romantik, conocido también como literatura del terror gótico) durante el siglo XIX. El cuento relata la vida de un muchacho llamado, Nathanaël, quien está traumatizado por la muerte de su padre, que murió en muy extrañas circunstancias, ocurrida durante su infancia.

Victor Frankenstein, un jeune étudiant brillant, crée de toutes pièces un être à l'apparence humaine. Bien vite, il regrette son geste. En effet, la créature prend l'apparence d'un monstre sanguinaire qui ne pense qu'à semer la mort et le malheur sur son passage et qui persécute son créateur. Au travers de l'histoire de Victor Frankenstein et de son monstre, Mary W. Shelley nous pose la question de l'origine de la cruauté humaine. Le monstre de Frankenstein est rejeté par tous. Il aimerait avoir des relations avec les humains mais ceux-ci le fuient. Il devient alors violent et s'en prend aux personnes qu'il rencontre.

El narrador intenta convencernos de su salud mental, diciéndonos que lo único que le pasa es que es un poco nervioso porque todos sus sentidos están extremadamente sensibilizados. El anciano con el que vive tiene un ojo azul que está velado, al que nuestro narrador describe como un ojo de buitre. El anciano realmente le cae bien pero odia el ojo de buitre....Hasta tal punto llega a odiar ese ojo que se convierte en una obsesión enfermiza, que le hace imposible no pensar en otra cosa que no sea planificar el asesinato del anciano.

"The Finest Story in the World" zeigt eine weniger bekannte Seite des großen Erzählers Kipling: sein Interesse an übernatürlichen Themen und damit seine Verbindung zum Fantasy- und Science-Fiction-Genre. Eine der unheimlichsten Erzählungen Kiplings, die auch Horror-Elemente enthält.

El corazón delator (en inglés original The Tell-Tale Heart) es un cuento del escritor estadounidense Edgar Allan Poe clasificado en la narrativa gótica. La historia presenta a un narrador anónimo obsesionado con el ojo enfermo (que llama "ojo de buitre") de un anciano con el cual convive. El corazón delator es considerado generalmente un clásico de la literatura gótica, y una de las obras más importantes de su autor. Ha sido adaptado o servido de inspiración en numerosas ocasiones y en distintos medios.

Four haunting classics, filled with mystery and suspense, abridged especially for young listeners: Frankenstein, The 39 Steps, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre....

Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

In 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley visited Lord Byron in Switzerland. After reading an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleys and his personal physician, John Polidori, to write horror stories of their own. Polidori was the only one to complete a story, and a good one, at that. Mary did come up with an idea though, and it became was the germ of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley, first published in 1818. This Gothic classic tells the haunting tale of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who defies the natural order by creating life from death. However, his monstrous creation becomes a terrifying and tragic figure, struggling with isolation and rejection from society. Shelley's story explores themes of ambition, the consequences of playing God, and the destructive potential of knowledge.

Edgar Allan Poe's early literary works were poetic, but he quickly turned to prose. He worked for several magazines and journals till in January 1845, The Raven was published and became an instant classic. Poe was also an early proponent of the detective story and announced his entry to this genre with the classic short story 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'.

A superbly crafted Dickens classic, masterfully narrated - a ghostly apparition supervises the trial of his murderer.

In a sleepy, little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family’s salvation - or its downfall.

Northanger Abbey, a satire of Gothic melodrama, is one of Jane Austen's most popular works. When Catherine Morland is launched into the politics and pitfalls of the Bath social season, she behaves with the cheerful open-mindedness of one of Jane Austen's most eligible classic heroines.

Il capolavoro di Bram Stoker (nella versione di Angelo Nessi, ed. Sonzogno 1922), l'opera capostipitite di tutte le produzioni letterarie e cinematografiche sui vampiri. Qui troverete la descrizione dettagliata del modo di agire dei vampiri, e l'esatto codice di comportamento, casomai vi capitasse di imbattervi in uno di essi.

Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens, first serialised in All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861. The action of the story takes place from Christmas Eve 1812, when the protagonist is about seven years old, to the winter of 1840. Great Expectations is written in a semi-autobiographical style, and is the story of the orphan Pip, tracing his life from his early days of childhood until adulthood.