There is a roar of applause for James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest’s “Sweeney Todd” and a thunderous encore for Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” These are intense and diabolical male characters created in a time when the macabre and demented were very popular. The 19th century brought a panoply of male-led publications that were hungry for content and insatiable for the penny. But before the male-inclined Sweeney Todds and Mr. Hydes, there were talented and creative women who were pioneers of Gothic literature.

Ann Radcliffe is considered the “Pioneer of the Gothic Novel.” In 1794, she wrote “The Mysteries of Udolpho.” Radcliffe is known as the “Mighty Enchantress” and has inspired other Gothic giants such as Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë. Radcliffe entranced people with a whole new style of writing, characterized by themes of terror, young women in peril, oozing desire, haunted houses, uncanny landscapes, and emotional suspense. Her narratives typically end up having rational explanations, favoring the mystique and fear of the supernatural over a full-fledged haunting—this is coined as the “explained supernatural.” Her work has been interpreted as the first psychological horror.

Radcliffe was famous in her time and grew quite wealthy from her work, becoming the breadwinner of her family—even her husband no longer needed to work. This atypical situation draws attention to how successful women in history will often be overshadowed, dimming the light of their success and the independence their innovation won for them.

Radcliffe harvested fame and colossal influence in her era despite the numerous criticisms her work received. Many critics felt deceived and disappointed by the lack of real ghosts in her work—and by the fact that she was a woman.

Her influence is shown early on in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s “The Monk: A Romance,” published in 1796, two years after “The Mysteries of Udolpho.” Lewis admits that he followed the Radcliffe school of fiction and had a “lack of originality,” as he puts it. He favors gore and horror over emotional suspense and terror, a recurring theme in the mimicry of male Gothic authors. “The Monk: A Romance” is an early Gothic example of a man’s literary work appropriating a woman’s.

Even though Radcliffe was mimicked and appropriated by less original men in her time, she has conquered being overshadowed and remains seated as Gothic literature’s matriarch.

The better-known Mary Shelley, a contemporary of Radcliffe, is much more present in historical context. Having written 1818’s “Frankenstein,” Shelley is viewed as the “Pioneer” or “Mother of Science Fiction” with “Frankenstein” being considered one of the greatest novels ever written. With a name not soon forgotten in history, Shelley is the most well-known and celebrated of the Gothic era women authors.

Shelley was raised atypically for her time. Her father was an anarchist author named William Godwin. He was a radicalized libertarian who was outspoken about his political views and opposition to the systems of British society. Additionally, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is thought of as the first feminist icon. Wollstonecraft wrote a pioneering work titled “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” in 1792, which fought for women to have the right to an education and asserted that women were not inferior to men; they just weren’t given the same opportunities. Both of Shelley’s parents advocated for universal education and were considered radical for these views at this time.

Shelley was fiercely encouraged to pursue education and dabble in areas “restricted” to women. Although her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, Wollstonecraft’s philosophies were deeply embedded in Shelley, giving her the wind beneath her wings to write “Frankenstein” at a mere 18 years old. She experienced a unique and privileged upbringing for her time, ultimately aiding her in becoming the legend she is today.

“Frankenstein” beautifully weaves science fiction with Gothic tapestries, calling into question the dark side of technological advancements and what monsters can be created in the process. Unrequited love, loneliness, entrapment, and suspense are key themes in this masterwork. The blending of Gothic and Science Fiction would be repeated in later 19th century male publications, such as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and H.G. Wells’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

Although the novel was a success and viewed as being ahead of its time, some critics during this era did not look favorably upon a woman creating such a thought-provoking and acclaimed novel. A London based publication called “British Critic” wrote, “The writer of [Frankenstein] is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”

Despite the male opposition, Shelley calmly sits on her throne as the “Mother of Science Fiction” and continues to inspire artists, authors, and filmmakers with her darkly Gothic and deeply sympathetic tale of human hubris. Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro directed the latest film version of “Frankenstein,” currently in theaters, which he claims is truer to Shelley’s novel than previous cinematic productions.

In addition to the widely known names of Shelley and Radcliffe, there is Charlotte Dacre, a British novelist and poet with a mysterious history. Dacre is best known for writing “Zofloya; or The Moor” under the pseudonym Rosa Matilda, a highly criticized yet tide-turning Gothic novel published in 1806. “Zofloya” contains themes of female sexuality and religion, enraging readers who deemed the work “inappropriate.” Dacre was viewed as a radical and a harlot.

Dacre’s work had been remotely forgotten until the 1990s, when feminist scholars unearthed “Zofloya.” The work was republished and revered for being one of the earliest examples of a woman Gothic author and the first to subvert the standard female Gothic protagonist.

Dacre wrote strong, often violent female characters who represented a desire to be free from the shackles of oppression. Her female characters were provocative, manipulative, dominant in their relationships, and explosively dismissed the confinements of inequality and female servitude. Dacre could easily be considered the first Gothic author to shamelessly express “female rage” and the desire to express their emotions and sexuality freely.

By flipping the script on Gothic female characters, Dacre is an integral and pioneering force in Gothic literature that has had more impact than what the history books note. Perhaps the most well-respected of the female Gothic authors is Charlotte Brontë, who wrote “Jane Eyre,” which she originally published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Considered one of the greatest novels ever written, “Jane Eyre” was seen as ahead of its time, much like Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

Much like Shelley, Brontë and her sisters, Anne and Emily, were encouraged by their mother and father to read, partake in art, and critically think about politics. At this time in Brontë’s village, girls were not allowed to access the library. However, her brother and father shared books and newspapers with her and her sisters openly. The sisters wrote poetry and began world-building from a young age, sharing the stories they created with each other. Brontë, her siblings, and her parents are unanimously known as the “Brontë Literary Family.”

Brontë’s younger sister, Emily, wrote a Gothic novel of her own, which did not receive the fame of her older sister’s when it was published; however, “Wuthering Heights” would achieve acclaim much later, being considered one of the greatest Gothic novels of all time. Virginia Woolf, an acclaimed 20th century novelist, wrote that “‘Wuthering Heights’ is a more difficult book to understand than ‘Jane Eyre,’ because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte.” Woolf said that Emily “looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel.” Woolf concludes, “It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels.”

Other notable pioneering Gothic women authors include Eliza Parsons, Eleanor Sleath, and Catherine Crowe. Parsons wrote “The Castle of Wolfenbach,” which tackled themes of secrecy, sentimentality, and family trauma. Sleath took inspiration from the Radcliffe school of fiction for her novel titled “The Orphan of the Rhine” and classically explores themes of romance and murder-mystery. Crowe wrote all sorts of novels, from detective tales to ghost stories. She often highlighted the intersectionality between women in the working class and those living with disabilities. She uses beast-like monsters such as werewolves and witches to represent the stigma of living as a marginalized person, showcasing how progressive her thought process was for her oppressive time.

With the success and allure of the Gothic genre came male-led serial publications throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Gothic literature was alluring and lucrative, drawing attention and bringing huge potential for financial gain.

The London-based serialized publication known as penny dreadfuls popped up in the late 19th century, reframing traditional Gothic themes into short, explosive works. Many penny dreadfuls were serials produced by “hack” writers under pressure. Penny dreadfuls favored speed, sensational impact, and mass appeal. There grew to be more of an emphasis on the punching impact of grotesque horror over the atmospheric suspense of terror that women established a century before.

The serial cheap-fiction market, however, often omitted or did not credit the authors, or used pseudonyms, so that individual woman’s creative contributions could be easily wiped out. That means that women’s subtler Gothic sensibility becomes overshadowed by the louder, more violent, male-dominated serial market. The women’s contributions were absorbed into the generic mass-market output without attribution, thus aiding in appropriation.

The Female Gothic shaped the tropes of the genre, while the male-dominated penny dreadful machine commercialized them, pushing that origin to be marginalized. In contrast, the Male Gothic is characterized by graphic horror and an overtly powerful, controlling male lead who unleashes this brutality onto the “other,” typically a woman. The Female Gothic to serial Male Gothic pipeline highlights the displacement of female voices and how men cannibalized the work of women. We can see that the influence of the Female Gothic is present in penny dreadfuls and other pulp horror, but the visible credit and recognition is lost.

In the mid-20th century, Gothic-Romance, pulp horror, and the paperback market exploded. Many of these prints were aimed at female readers and built on older Gothic tropes. However, some of the authors were men writing under female pseudonyms. Opportunistically, male-led publications further absorbed the market, taking the creativity out of the female author’s pens and falsifying their fiction.

An earlier example of this would be in James Malcolm Rymer, best known for co-writing “Sweeney Todd” in 1846. There is evidence from the records of Edward Lloyd, an important publisher of serialized fiction, that Rymer wrote stories using the names “Authoress of Ada” and Elizabeth Caroline Grey. The latter was a real British author who wrote over 30 novels in her lifetime—not one of these writings can be traced back to being a penny dreadful.

This evidence implies that the originally female-attributed works were published only under the guise of female authorship, allowing men to reap the benefits of the publication’s success while simultaneously keeping women’s creativity out of circulation. This is a clear case of a man co-opting and profiting from claiming a woman’s authorship in the penny dreadful era, made all the more unjust when considering how prolific Rymer was as an author under his own name at this time.

This trend of serialized and sensational Gothic fiction written by men became the “classics,” burying the roots of pioneering women beneath their invasive thorns. Gothic women writers embraced experience and independence in their tales, establishing themselves as sexually adult women who criticized their patriarchal society. These stories serve as much more than entertainment; they are a societal narrative and a vital mouthpiece through which women spoke their grievances.

Comparatively, the Male Gothic continually frames women as submissive victims of enraged brutality, ironically penetrating the castles and lives of these female characters and “taking what is rightfully theirs.”

The Gothic tradition is both a monument to women’s creative daring and a cautionary tale about how patriarchal markets devour their own mothers. What began as a space for women like Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and Charlotte Dacre to explore fear, desire, and autonomy became, through the penny dreadful and pulp presses, an industrial machine that stripped those emotions of their feminine authorship. The men who followed borrowed the architecture of women’s terror but gutted its heart for spectacle and sales. To recognize this is not to dismiss the penny dreadful, but to remember whose haunted corridors it first walked. The Gothic was, and remains, a house women built—only later occupied by louder, hungrier tenants.