“But Don’t Forget Who You Really Are. And I’m Not Talking About Your So-called Real Name. All Names

dark academia literary works: a masterlist

Hello! I replied to this post on Reddit today, trying to compile all the dark academia books I could think of, and then thought that maybe all of you here might find it useful too, so here you go. It is a very, very broad list, a mix of classic and contemporary literature, and there is no set criteria besides having a dark vibe (this includes murder and crime but could just be the way it’s written as well) and portraying an academic setting, most of the time from the student’s point of view. I haven’t read all of these myself and so I can’t judge on quality, but hopefully this will inspire people to add on to it in the comments.

Here you go!

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson The Secret History, Donna Tartt If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio Maurice by E. M. Forster The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Possession by A.S. Byatt The Truants by Kate Weinberg The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Vicious by V. E. Schwab The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (tangentially related) A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro The Likeness by Tana French The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (coming out tomorrow!) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman Oleanna by David Mamet Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Other classics that are not Dark Academia in content, but which I would include in a list of the DA canon: The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer Shakespeare’s plays (Macbeth, Hamlet are good ones to start with) A Separate Peace, John Knowles The Bacchae, Euripides Greek tragedies (a good one to start with is Antigone, very popular and staged many a time) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Beat generation literature Jane Austen’s books (light academia, anyone?)

rocksforthespirit on ig

so idk bout y’all but my otps are important to me bc they’re the closest thing to romance and love in my tiny sad little life. juST LET ME LIVE IN SOME FICTIONAL SHOES FOR A MINUTE AND EXPERIENCE SOME PASSIONATE HAND-HOLDING 

genius, give this person a medal

you are cute and thoughtful <3, thank you for sharing this

don’t hate urself, hate the system that made u feel insecure about every single aspect of ur life

the anime that shattered what was left of my childhood innocence when i was 14. god bless it.

just realized that my passion is not being passionate enough about anything

closed obviously, so when the killer gets into my room i wake up from the noise of my door opening and fight for my life with the phone's charger

wait people sleep with their doors closed????