# The 17 Greatest Gothic Novels of All Time

> Crumbling abbeys, locked attics and vampires, spread across two and a half centuries of fiction.

*By YPB Team · Published September 22, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-17-greatest-gothic-novels-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Dracula** — score 1000/1000
   Bram Stoker's 1897 epistolary novel about the Transylvanian count's move to England.
2. **Frankenstein** — score 919/1000
   Mary Shelley's 1818 novel about a scientist who animates a creature from dead matter.
3. **The Turn of the Screw** — score 741/1000
   Henry James's 1898 novella of a governess and two possibly haunted children.
4. **Interview with the Vampire** — score 600/1000
   Anne Rice's 1976 novel told by the vampire Louis in New Orleans.
5. **Melmoth the Wanderer** — score 529/1000
   Charles Maturin's 1820 novel of a scholar who sold his soul for 150 more years.
6. **Mexican Gothic** — score 529/1000
   Silvia Moreno-Garcia's 2020 novel set in a decaying mansion in 1950s Mexico.
7. **Rebecca** — score 529/1000
   Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel about a second wife haunted by the first at Manderley.
8. **The Castle of Otranto** — score 529/1000
   Horace Walpole's 1764 novel, generally credited as the first Gothic novel.
9. **Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde** — score 448/1000
   Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella of a doctor and his murderous other self.
10. **The Mysteries of Udolpho** — score 448/1000
   Ann Radcliffe's 1794 bestseller of an orphan imprisoned in an Apennine castle.
11. **Carmilla** — score 448/1000
   Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella about a female vampire, 25 years before Dracula.
12. **The Monk** — score 353/1000
   Matthew Lewis's scandalous 1796 novel of a Capuchin monk's fall.
13. **Northanger Abbey** — score 353/1000
   Jane Austen's 1817 novel that gently parodies the Gothic craze.
14. **The Haunting of Hill House** — score 353/1000
   Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel of four guests in a house that is not sane.
15. **Jane Eyre** — score 240/1000
   Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of a governess and the secret in Thornfield's attic.
16. **Wuthering Heights** — score 240/1000
   Emily Brontë's 1847 novel of Heathcliff, Cathy and the Yorkshire moors.
17. **The Picture of Dorian Gray** — score 0/1000
   Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel about a portrait that ages in its owner's place.

Tags: books, horror, classics, gothic