| Gothic Novel is a type of romantic fiction. It was | | | | haunted castle with dungeons, underground |
| predominant in English literature around the late | | | | passages, ghost-haunted rooms, and secret |
| 18th century to the first two decades of the 19th | | | | stairways that produced great amount of awe, |
| century. The setting for the fiction was usually a | | | | wonder and fear. |
| ruined Gothic castle. The typical story of such | | | | The genre was nothing but a phase of the literary |
| romantic fiction revolved around the suffering of | | | | movement of romanticism in English literature. It |
| an innocent woman inflected by a cruel villain. The | | | | was also the precursor of the modern mystery |
| writers used ghosts and other supernatural | | | | novel. |
| occurrences. The main intend of such novels was | | | | The Major writers of the Gothic Romance: |
| to evoke chilling terror by skillfully using mystery | | | | It was Horace Walpole who inaugurated the |
| and horror. | | | | Gothic romance. He wrote The Castle of Otranto: |
| The Term Gothic Applied for: | | | | A Gothic Story (1764). Other major writers were |
| 1. The Gothic novel was also considered as Gothic | | | | Clara Reeve, who wrote The Champion of Virtue |
| romance. | | | | (1777); Ann Radcliffe, who wrote The Mysteries |
| 2. The term Gothic is also employed to designate | | | | of Udolpho (1794); Charles Robert Maturin, who |
| narrative poetry or prose of which the major | | | | wrote The Fatal Revenge (1807); and Mary |
| elements are horror, violence, and the | | | | Wollstonecraft Shelley who wrote Frankenstein |
| supernatural. | | | | (1818). |
| 3. The selection of the locale was usually a | | | | |