Gothic novels in english literature plan introduction the Rise of Gothic Fiction in England

Stephen King

Stephen King is also considered a master of modern Gothic Horror. He has written numerous novels featuring Gothic attributes including Salem’s Lot (1975) and Pet Sematary (1983).

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  Salem’s Lot The novel is a direct homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A vampire, Kurt Barlow, arrives in Jerusalem’s Lot in Maine and proceeds to feed off the local inhabitants until a small group of residents hunt him down. King deliberately ‘borrowed’ scenes from Dracula and rewrote them for his own novel.
  

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  Pet Sematary uses an ancient burial ground as a place of resurrection. The burial ground lies behind the Pet’s Sematary, a graveyard created by local children for their dead pets. The ancient burial ground has magical properties, due to which a dead cat buried there comes back to life. A man loses his son in an accident, and in his despair, buries the child in the ancient burial ground. The child returns, only not as it was. Events spiral out of control until the boy’s father burns the house to the ground and escapes.The original 'sematary' did, in fact, exist. Some incidents inspired King to go down the route of 'what if', and he wrote Pet Sematary as a result. When he read it after finishing, he found it 'so startling and so gruesome that I put the book in a drawer, thinking it would never be published.'
  

The Gothic Novel today

The Gothic novel has grown from its humble origins into a wide-ranging genre that continues to be popular today in both literature and film. For as long as the human mind seeks distraction and escapism with a thrill, the Gothic novel will continue to hold an important place in Literary Fiction.
Haunted houses, dark romances, shadowy corridors, windswept moors… Gothic literature has everything you could ever want in a tale of terror. Its tales shock you out of your everyday experiences — but they’re so uncannily enthralling you may well wish to remain in their realms of fright forever.
Here’s our guide to the gloomiest and most brooding of genres. Read on as we trace the history of Gothic literature and introduce ten essential reads that have haunted us for centuries.