THE GOTHIC THAT REFUSES TO DIE: A REPORT ON THE DARK RISING OF ILLUSTRATED CLASSICS IN 2025

By Muna, Founder of Ink in Blood Press

A YEAR WRAPPED IN VELVET AND SHADOW

The first thing you notice about 2025 is not the technology, not the AI, not the endless wars of algorithms fighting for your attention. No, what you notice is the resurrection.

Something old, perfumed with dust and candle smoke, is stirring again. Not politely, not academically, not in the safe little circles of people who read out of duty. No, no — the Gothic is coming back with fangs bared, embroidered sleeves dragging through the soil, and a sensual, decadent hunger that feels almost inappropriate for this sterile digital age.

And somehow, in this unexpected revival, illustrated Gothic books have forced their way to center stage, again.

Readers who once scrolled soullessly through minimalist book covers (all beige, all identical, all whispering the same sanitized secrets) are now craving the forbidden, the dramatic, the baroque. They want illustrations, not algorithms; characters, not templates; romantic nightmares, not soft, pastel “cozy reads.”

And in this craving, this hunger, something extraordinary is happening.

Small presses are rising.

The giants, Folio Society, Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions, Oxford University Press, Valancourt Books, still dominate the marble altars of traditional publishing. But in the cracks between them, something dark and new is blooming.

A new wave. A new species of publisher. One built not on committees or polite literary dinners… but on gothic obsession, aesthetics, and a kind of fever that only Gothic literature can awaken.

And that is where we begin.

Let’s be honest: Gothic literature never truly dies. It simply retreats underground, curling beneath the floorboards like a creature too beautiful for daylight, waiting for the right historical moment to slip back into the bloodstream of culture. And 2025 has given it exactly the conditions it likes, darkness, exhaustion, and a collective spiritual hunger.

The world is tired. People move through their days like ghosts haunting their own lives: burned out, bored, disillusioned, screen-blind and heart-shattered. Modern romance has become predictable. Modern fantasy repeats itself. Modern “dark fiction” too often feels like trauma porn dipped in glitter, loud but empty. Readers want meaning again. They want danger. They want beauty so sharp it cuts their fingers when they turn the page.

And so, naturally, the classics have started to storm back.

Carmilla is rising once more, lifted on the hungry shoulders of Sapphic Gothic revival. Dracula is climbing charts again, its annotated editions exploding across BookTok like forbidden scriptures finally receiving their vengeance. Frankenstein has gone viral thanks to Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming adaptation, a reminder that Mary Shelley remains eternally ahead of us all. Rebecca is experiencing a renaissance among dark-academia readers who crave psychological seduction more than happy endings. Jane Eyre continues to stand, unflinching, as a feminist war anthem cleverly hidden inside a governess’s confession. And The Monk, madness, lust, demons, nuns, obsession, has re-emerged as the original unhinged dark-romance disaster piece, shocking new readers who thought they’d seen everything.

It isn’t limited to the novels. The Gothic is infiltrating culture again like perfume in an abandoned church: impossible to ignore once you catch the first breath. Gothic fashion dominates TikTok. Dark academia refuses to die, no matter how many “trend cycles” try to bury it. Illustrated editions appear and vanish within minutes as collectors attack the Buy button. Publishers are launching new Gothic collections. University departments, once aloof, have quietly begun reviving Gothic curricula.

Just this month, Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in Manchester launched a new online course devoted entirely to the Gothic. Carmilla, Frankenstein, Northanger Abbey, Wuthering Heights, and other feverish masterpieces are returning to classrooms, to book clubs, to reading lists, to minds hungry for something ancient and unsettling. Even the academic elite have finally admitted what the rest of us already knew: the Gothic is not frivolous. It is not outdated. It is not irrelevant.

The Gothic is the shadow heart of literature. It pulses beneath everything. And it always finds a way back into the light, especially when the world grows dim.

THE INDUSTRY IS CHANGING, QUIETLY, BUT VIOLENTLY

Something fascinating is happening behind the scenes of publishing, something no one dares to say aloud in polite literary circles. The giants are slowing down. Folio Society, adored like an aristocratic relic, cannot produce fast enough to satisfy the new hunger.

Penguin Classics is losing the younger generation, who look at those academic covers and feel nothing. Oxford’s editions remain respected but emotionally cold, like reading inside a museum. HarperCollins wanders in and out of the Gothic market with inconsistent devotion. Even Valancourt, the beloved necromancer of obscure masterpieces, cannot keep pace with readers devouring illustrated editions faster than they can be printed. And while the titans struggle to adapt, indie presses, tiny operations, often a single human being surrounded by candles, caffeine, and obsession, are creating illustrated editions, annotated editions, collector editions, niche Gothic runs, and small-batch printings at a speed and intimacy no corporation can imitate. Their limitations have become their strengths. They cannot compete in quantity, so they devastate in aesthetic identity.

Because let’s be brutally honest: readers are no longer loyal to corporations. They’re loyal to vibe. They want a brand with a heartbeat, a vision, a soul, and that is why a small independent press like Ink in Blood can stand beside Folio Society on the first page of Bing, outranking Penguin and HarperCollins for illustrated Gothic searches. The algorithm simply recognizes what readers already know: some brands publish books, and some resurrect them. Ink in Blood is unmistakably the latter.

THE BIG TITLES RETURN, AND THEY ARE NOT ALONE

Let’s talk titles. Because the revival is not random.

This year alone:

• Carmilla has surged again due to sapphic reinterpretations.

• Dracula continues dominating thanks to dark-coded audiobooks and new film announcements.

• Frankenstein is unavoidable, Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation is basically a cultural earthquake.

• The Picture of Dorian Gray has become the gay dark-academia bible.

• Rebecca and Jane Eyre remain evergreen Gothic romance staples.

• Interview with the Vampire has been reborn through the AMC series, renewing hunger for Gothic decadence.

• Jekyll and Hyde is resurging among psychological-horror readers.

• The Vampyre (Polidori) is booming thanks to its ties to Frankenstein’s origin story.

• The Necromancer is rising again thanks to public domain whispers.

• The Monk is being rediscovered as the original unhinged dark romance.

But the revival goes beyond the usual suspects. Readers want the obscure, the forgotten, the banned.

Which is why Tartarus Press and Valancourt Books are thriving. Which is why indie publishers resurrecting lesser-known Gothic works are suddenly in demand.

And this is exactly where Ink in Blood is positioned, in the fertile, hungry middle between the giants and the forgotten.

INK IN BLOOD: A CASE STUDY IN THE MODERN GOTHIC RESURGENCE

Let me break the fourth wall here:

Ink in Blood is not just a gothic press.It is a literary rebellion.

A rebellion against vanilla publishing. Against soulless editions. Against covers that feel like IKEA instructions. Against the sterilization of classic literature.

Our illustrated editions, starting with The Monk, are the antidote.

Our approach is intimate. It’s obsessive. It’s cinematic. It’s dangerous, in a sexy way.

THE FUTURE OF GOTHIC LITERATURE, AND WHY ILLUSTRATED IS WINNING

The future of Gothic literature is not subtle; it is carving itself visibly into the next few years. Illustrated Gothic editions will dominate the landscape from 2025 to 2027, because readers no longer want plain text, they want visual mythology. They want pages that breathe. They want storytelling that arrives with a pulse, accompanied by images that feel like hauntings stitched into the paper. The rise of collector editions is already eclipsing standard paperbacks. People crave possessions, not files. They want artifacts with weight, texture, presence. A book must now be something you can place on an altar, not just a shelf.

What is rising fastest in this strange new era is the authority of indie presses. Traditional publishers move with glacial solemnity, but small presses, fast, intimate, obsessive, are outperforming them in niche fiction. Speed matters. Aesthetic identity matters. Intimacy matters. And this is precisely why forgotten Gothic works are surfacing again: The Necromancer, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, The Witch of Ravensworth, Valeria and Her Week of Wonders, The Night-Side of Nature, vampiric novellas buried in footnotes, and the dark, trembling brilliance of nineteenth-century Gothic women who deserve resurrection. The ground is shifting. You can feel it in the air. And illustrated editions are not following the change, they are leading it.

THE GOTHIC WAS NOT DEAD. IT WAS SLEEPING UNDER A FLOORBOARD.

What we are witnessing now is not a trend. It is a return. A return to decadence. A return to obsession. A return to books that feel alive and ancient and sensual and gloriously unhinged. The giants are watching. The academics are watching. TikTok is watching. Illustrators are sharpening their pencils. Readers are lighting their candles. Publishers are scrambling. And in the center of this gathering storm, we, Ink in Blood, rise like something stitched together in a laboratory at midnight, luminous and inevitable.

Illustrated Gothic books are not merely literature. They are worlds. They are spells. They are portals. They are the dark, shimmering doorways readers have been starving for. And 2025 is the year those doorways open again.