darkly academic .

essay | books that are ACTUALLY considered "Dark Academia", a mega-list

Ever since the conception of this internet trend, literature has been latched to it. It has become almost a necessity, a rite of passage, to read The Secret History if one wishes to get involved in this “aesthetic”. In a similar vein, authors have begun to market toward these internet trends instead of writing an actual engaging plot.

Now, I must preface this by saying you can absolutely enjoy these books. I enjoyed most of these books, and think The Secret History is one of my favourites. But the internet has corrupted our critical thinking, our ability to critique something that we like. Nothing is perfect, and if one gets upset because another doesn’t like their favourite book, or is critiquing it, they are simply immature. But I am also not an oracle, and you can disagree with my views here! I encourage it! How boring would we all be if we merely agreed with one another?
Anyway, disclaimer over!

The Sense of Touch (1623) by Jusepe de Ribera.

Caravaggio, Dostoevsky, romanesque architecture, Erik Satie — the very Avengers of Dark Academia as an aesthetic. Renaissance and baroque paintings, existentialist Russian literature, the Cologne Cathedral (specifically) and Greek statues, classical and modernist music; all fit within this study-orientated aesthetic. Though one can be involved in this community through merely the fashion or decor, I do find that whenever one asks for a “Dark Academia” book recommendation, there is a great lack of texts that are not merely written for “the vibe.”

The texts I always see are of course The Secret History, If We Were Villains, Babel, and Ninth House. I dislike two of these books, I find one a blatant attempt to copy another’s “vibe”, and I like the other.
But what they all have in common is that under any comment section requesting DA books, these will be recommended. There’s nothing wrong with that, should the commenter be looking for a book that matches purely the “vibe” of DA, but that is not the epitome of the aesthetic, and you should absolutely be broadening your horizons if you wish to truly engage with the trend (in my humble opinion).

(I would also advise you avoid Babel at all costs as it’s an awful, awful novel… but I do also know that that is merely my opinion! As a writer, I despise that book lol).

There are books that I believe encompass this Darkly Academic vibe without having been written FOR the aesthetic, if you see what I mean. Books you would find Camilla Macauley enjoying tremendously. Not only will they hopefully scratch that DA itch, but they are books that I believe are must-reads for any hobbyist, or true, academic. Let it widen your scope — you can also impress strangers by saying you’ve read Dostoevsky lol.

Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi (1638) by Jusepe de Ribera

Your Author’s Top Picks

Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus or, Goethe’s Faustus

“The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust, that was first performed sometime between 1588 and Marlowe's death in 1593. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era, several years later. The powerful effect of early productions of the play is indicated by the legends that quickly accrued around them—that actual devils once appeared on the stage during a performance, "to the great amazement of both the actors and spectators", a sight that was said to have driven some spectators mad.”

John Williams’ Stoner

“William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

“Few creatures of horror have seized readers' imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein's terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless writers of horror and suspense. Considering the novel's enduring success, it is remarkable that it began merely as a whim of Lord Byron's.”

Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy

“The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.”

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

“Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with Porfiry, a suspicious detective, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky’s dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur and everyone’s faith in humanity is tested.”

(Descriptions from Goodreads)

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Ancient Texts Of Antiquity

• The Odyssey by Homer

• The Bacchae by Euripides

• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

• The Iliad by Homer

• Sappho’s poetry

• The Epic of Gilgamesh

• The Aenid by Virgil

• Metamorphoses by Ovid

• Antigone by Sophocles

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• The Republic by Plato

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu

• Zhuangzi

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Dear Philosophers

• Søren Kierkegaard

• Friedrich Nietzsche

• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• Virginia Woolf

• Niccolo Machiavelli

• Henry David Thoreau

• Socrates

• Immanuel Kant

• Hannah Arendt

• Karl Marx

• David Hume

• Simone de Beauvoir

• Anne Conway

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Poets To Elevate The Soul

• Lord Byron

• Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Emily Dickinson

• The Brontë Sisters

• John Keats

• William Shakespeare

• Edgar Allan Poe

• Algernon Charles Swinburne

• H.P Lovecraft

• Rainer Maria Rilke

• Christina Rossetti

• Lord Tennyson

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Non Fiction, and Topics to Pursue

• The Immortal Evening by Stanley Plumley

• Mariner by Dr Malcolm Guite

• The Penguin Book of Witches

• Poison by Ben Hubbard

• Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (Semi-autobiographical)

• The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell

• Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author by Edward John Trelawney

• Ancient Sociology

• Ancient Architecture and Art History

• Ancient Anthropology (Greeks, Romans, Celts, Mesopotamia — any ancient civilisation)

• Cosmology

• Magical History and The Arcane

• Supernatural Folklore

• Specific Artist/Art Movement History

• Royal/Governmental History of Any Country

• Dark Botanicals — Poisons and Fungi

• Plague and Sicknesses

• Executions/Judicial/Punishments

• Author Biographies/Autobiographies

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Other Darkly Academic Texts

• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

• Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse

• The Last Man by Mary Shelley

• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

• The Monk by Matthew Lewis

• Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

• The Red and The Black by Stendhal

• Caleb Williams by William Godwin

• The Penguin Book of Hell

• The Penguin Book of Demons

• The British Library Tales of the Weird

• To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Of course, there are other texts that one could read that fits onto this list, so if you know of any do share in the comments below!

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