The Gothic Novels of Mrs. Smith

“…the sorceress, whose appearance was so very strange, that, though only at a mask, she excited a degree of horror in all the beholders. Her robe was of white, bordered with various mystic figures; round her head was entwined a serpent; her long, black, matted hair hung disgustingly on her shoulders; while her piercing dark eyes rolled beneath the raven locks which half concealed her face, and seemed to read the hearts of the surrounding spectators. In her right hand she held a wand, and in her left a book, which she called the Mystery of Fate, and into which she frequently invited them to look.”

~ Mrs. Smith, Barozzi

The novels of Mrs. Smith were first published in the early 1800s. Her tales of terror, fraught with intrigue, adventure, and romance, are like lost treasures today. Crafted with skill and style, Smith’s novels were well-received in their time. Conventional Gothic plotlines make for stories familiar and accessible to an aficionado of Gothic fiction, while those same conventions make them strange and unpredictable for someone new to the genre.