Dark Academia took the world of social media by storm. There is some worthwhile criticism which I am absolutely not ignoring but as an aesthetic, personally, I love it. Especially when it walks that fine line of romanticising learning the pursuit of knowledge and criticising the elitism and classism that has traditionally gone hand in hand with education.
Here is my essential reading list.
Essential Dark Academia Reading:
The Secret History by Donna Tart
The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Babel by R F Kuang
If We Were Villians by ML Rio
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Our Share of the Night by Mariana Enriquez
Bunny by Mona Awad
The Atlas Six by Olivia Blake
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
A Lesson in Vengence by Victoria Lee
The Maidens by Alex Michaeledis
Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Vicious by VE Schwab
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Classic Dark Academia:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Iliad by Homer
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
What are your favourite dark academia reads?
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