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Matthew Lewis's 1796 novel The Monk took the gothic supernatural to new heights; demonic powers, witchcraft, a Bleeding Nun and the Spanish Inquisition all feature in this tale of the lust-demented monk Ambrosio.
You weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition were you...
You weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition were you...
By the 1800s the gothic romance had begun to develop along two distinct paths. One was forged by the Brontë family... 
Wuthering Heights, published in 1847 is an ur-text of the gothic romance genre. Emily Brontë's novel of cruelty and passion amongst two generations of two families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, all living in the shadow of the doomed love between Catherine and Heathcliffe.
Jane Eyre, published the same year by Charlotte Brontë, is a harrowing story of a heroine treated cruelly by almost everyone she meets, including Edward Rochester - the man she finally marries after he is humbled and almost destroyed by his first wife.
Many of the Brontë themes recur in subsequent gothic romances: the Byrinic anti-hero, the governess who finds love, the cruel household, the relative who is locked away, the unhappy marriage. But the gothic themes are now of their time - no medieval castles any more.
The second gothic branch emerged earlier, and seemed poised to be the more successful. Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, was published by Mary Shelly in 1818. It may be the first science fiction novel, but it was instrumental in redefining the gothic...
Frankenstein is a story of great ambition, terror and pity. It is a love story as well as a revenge tragedy. But it's major accomplishment was to plant the gothic into the soil of scientific rationality: the horrors that man create can outstrip the terrors of the supernatural.
Throughout the 19th century psychological and scientific gothic horror began to make its mark: mad creations of man, crazed séances and mesmeric powers lurked in forbidding houses...
Whilst the supernatural gothic turned towards vampires and etheric creatures. Gothic mystery and suspense were in, women with great hair fleeing houses was out.
