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DARK ACADEMIA classic titles |
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these two books - written a century apart - could be considered the urtexts of the Dark Academia aesthetic |
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by Donna Tartt
Richard Papen ... arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life -- in particular by an elite group of five students: Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.
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by Oscar Wilde
The novel fits well with the theme of being obsessed with certain aesthetics, including a dark, gothic atmosphere and focus on art and literature. And a death.
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by Lili Anolik
Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly--a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession--but memory and instinct won't allow Nica's older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. |
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by Susan Choi
Warned about the womanizing activities of Professor Nicholas Brodeur before her arrival at his prestigious university, graduate student Regina Gottlieb is nevertheless captured by his charisma and good looks before falling prey to his volatile wife. |
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by Susanna Clarke
In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England--until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight. Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician, the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. |
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by Thomas Christopher Greene
Found wandering naked and mentally traumatized in Central Park, the headmaster of an elite boarding school imparts a story that is shaped by complicated memories, the evolution of a loving relationship, and a tragedy he cannot comprehend. |
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by Deborah E. Harkness
Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782 , deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. |
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by Joanne Harris
For generations, elite young men have attended St. Oswald's School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric classics teacher who has been a revered fixture for more than 30 years. But this year, things are different. Straitley is joined in this, his 99th, term by five new faculty members, including one who holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Ozzie's ways and secrets, it's comforts and conceits. |
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by Kazuo Ishiguro
As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. |
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by Lisa Jackson
In order to keep an eye on her half-sister, Shaylee, Julia Farentino takes a job at an elite boarding school in Oregon known for turning wayward kids around. Julia is suspicious of the school, because she knows of one student who disappeared, and has never been found. Soon she uncovers disturbing information about previous students. |
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by Rachel Klein
An isolated sixteen-year-old boarding school student recounts in her diary her growing paranoia that a fellow classmate is responsible for her best friend's wasting illness as well as a series of other disasters, a suspicion she is unable to confirm or deny years later. |
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by Elizabeth Kostova
"To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history"....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of. |
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by Joan Weigall Lindsay
It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared ... and never returned. |
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by Erin Morgenstern
Behind the scenes of Le Cirque de Reves, a fierce competition is underway -- duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. |
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by M. L. Rio
Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras. But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students' world of make-believe |
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by Muriel Spark
Set at a vaguely disreputable finishing school (which moves around Europe to outrun debts), and run by a sometimes writer and his wife. Into his creative writing class comes a literary prodigy, and a game of cat and mouse not free of sexual jealousy and attraction begins. |
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by Christopher Swann
A literary thriller set in the elite -- and sometimes dark -- environs of Blackburne, a prep school in Virginia. When Matthias Glass's best friend, Fritz, vanishes without a trace in the middle of an argument during their senior year, Matthias tries to move on with his life, only to realize that until he discovers what happened to his missing friend, he will be stuck in the past, guilty, responsible, alone. |
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by Dan Vyleta
Welcome to a Victorian England unlike any other you have experienced before. Here, wicked thoughts (both harmless and hate-filled) appear in the air as telltale wisps of Smoke. Young Thomas Argyle, a son of aristocracy, has been sent to an elite boarding school. Here he will be purged of Wickedness, for the wealthy do not Smoke. |
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by Sarah Waters
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves -- fingersmiths. |
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by Jincy Willett
Amy Gallup used to be a promising young author. Now, her three novels are out-of-print and she pays the bills by teaching would-be writers in a university extension course. One class is so much like the last that she has to use a crib sheet to keep her students straight, but this term is ... a little different. |
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