The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg is a truly chilling 19th gothic novel, which makes it pretty unique. What we call gothic in the 19th century is not really gothic - or in other words, scary - to us.
Frankenstein is a good example. For us it's not really a tale of terror. I like it because of its richness as literature. If we go back a bit further to the queen of gothic - Ann Radcliffe...to the modern reader, her work is hilarious because it's pure melodrama, and even in the nineteenth century there was a growing sense of that - that these novels are not really scary at all.
Jane Austen satirizes such gothic novels in Northanger Abbey and in some of her other early work. That's something that is underappreciated - how funny, how witty, Jane Austen is. We read Austen for the drama and interest of human relationships, but all of her novels also have this humorous side, most of which we don't get because it relates to 19th century culture.
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