It’s all candlelit study sessions, whispered debates about Greek tragedy, and the intoxicating smell of old money and old books. But what happens when we look past the velvet curtains? Is dark academia simply an aesthetic, or does it say something sharper about literature, class, and longing?
A style with substance—or just good lighting?
The visual appeal of dark academia is undeniable. It’s the romance of learning made fashionable, the thrill of elite spaces distilled into a Pinterest board. Yet behind the visuals lies something more unsettling: the aesthetic often centres on privilege. These students can linger in libraries and quote Sappho not because they’re uniquely profound, but because they have time, money, and access. The darker shadows of dark academia aren’t just about blood on the snow—they’re about who gets to study beautifully.
Who gets to study beautifully?
Part of dark academia’s allure lies in its exclusivity. Think of Tartt’s The Secret History, where Hampden’s Greek students are cloistered away from the rest of campus, their erudition doubling as armour. But exclusivity also reproduces social hierarchies: wealth, whiteness, and academic elitism are baked into the genre. For every haunted seminar room, there’s the question of who isn’t there, who can’t afford the tuition or the tweed.
Dark academia, then, is both an aspiration and a critique of the academic world. It captures the romance of intellectual pursuit while exposing the corruptions of insularity. It gives us characters who are brilliant but brittle, seduced by knowledge yet undone by their own hubris.
From Brideshead to BookTok: The evolution of a genre
Although it may feel modern, dark academia has a rich literary lineage. Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited set the template for elite, insular friendships in cloistered settings. Tartt’s The Secret History sharpened the model, layering murder onto classical learning. Today, BookTok has reimagined the genre, blending gothic tension with millennial anxieties. What was once niche is now mainstream, complete with Spotify playlists and TikTok outfit challenges.
The evolution matters because it reflects our shifting desires. In an age of distraction, dark academia promises a sense of focus. In a world of economic precarity, it offers fantasy: the freedom to devote one’s life to beauty, knowledge, and obsession. It’s escapism wrapped in Latin quotations.
Reading between the ivy-covered lines
To love dark academia is not to ignore its problems. It’s to acknowledge both its glamour and its rot. The genre asks uncomfortable questions: Can knowledge corrupt? Is beauty worth the cost of cruelty? Who pays the price when ambition tips into obsession?
The best novels in this tradition don’t just offer candlelit seminar rooms; they also provide a deeper understanding of the human experience. They pull the reader into moral grey zones, into the tension between longing and loss, intellect and isolation. Below are a few recommendations that push the aesthetic beyond mood into meaning.
Recommendations
1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The ur-text of dark academia, Tartt’s novel lingers in the shadows of obsession and complicity. Of course, it is number one. As Richard Papen reflects on the allure of his classmates:
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
2. If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio
Set in a Shakespeare-only conservatory, this novel blends performance and reality until both unravel. On the danger of devotion, one character muses:
“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
3. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Moody and speculative, it explores a secretive institution where obsession borders on horror. Its narrator captures the spell of the setting:
“Catherine was built of stone and glass and wood, and like all things that last, it was hard and dark and full of secrets.”
4. The Likeness by Tana French
A detective novel with gothic overtones, it centres on identity and belonging. Cassie Maddox, slipping into another life, observes:
“You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own memory.”
A surreal and satirical take on MFA culture, it turns dark academia inside out with horror and humour. Its narrator describes the pull of belonging:
“They will lure you in with their sweetness, the sweetness that masks the rot, the sickness that seeps out when you’re too close.”
6. Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates
Six Oxford students create a psychological game that spirals into cruelty and obsession. The narrator reflects on the long shadow of youth:
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple, but it is always waiting for us, patient as a trap.”
Bonus: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
A curveball. This one is a precursor to the genre, but it still captures nostalgia, privilege, and ruin with aching beauty. It is so worth your time. There is a reason it is still being discussed 80 years later. As Charles Ryder recalls:
“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, come back and dig it up and remember.”
Dark academia remains irresistible because it straddles the line between fantasy and critique. We’re drawn to the ivy and the candlelight, yes—but also to the shadows they cast. To read within the genre is to accept its contradictions: that beauty can be poisonous, that learning can be destructive, that yearning for another world often reveals what we lack in our own.
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