All Program Dates
May 13, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
June 3, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
July 8, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
September 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
October 14, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
November 11, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
December 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Registration
Admission for this book club is $30 per session or $210 for the whole series. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
This course is now sold out.
If you are still interested in joining the waitlist, please email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
Description
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, join The Ladies of the House of Love book club for a marathon season exploring the Gothic inspirations behind Austen’s classic satire of the genre, Northanger Abbey (1818).
Stretching over eight months, this special season of The Ladies of the House of Love will begin with three iconic Gothic works, including one, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), that Austen heavily satirizes in Northanger Abbey. Then, the club will explore lesser-known books that Austen references as “horrid novels” in Northanger. Finally, on December 9, 2025, just one week before Austen’s 250th birthday, the club will read Northanger Abbey and hold a birthday party for the Authoress. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of the Gothic as part of a community of fellow book lovers and Janeites!
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 1, Tuesday, May 13: Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
This famous novel relates the history of Emily St. Aubert, who endures challenges such her parents’ deaths, seclusion and haunting in a castle, and the misdeeds of Signor Montoni. Wildly popular in its day, the book is a classic of the Gothic, and Jane Austen referenced it frequently in Northanger Abbey.
This is a lengthy novel, so leave yourself time to read and enjoy it prior to our book club discussion! There is no obligation to have read the entire book before our May meeting, though the discussion will contain spoilers.
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 2, Tuesday, June 3: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Walpole wrote what is widely considered the first Gothic novel while serving as a Member of Parliament. Fascinated with medieval history, art, and architecture, Walpole merged medievalism and terror in a style that has shaped the genre ever since. Arguably the urtext of the Gothic, this book provides a foundation for all the Gothic novels that followed later in the eighteenth century and ever since.
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 3, Tuesday, July 8: Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
Published before its author had turned twenty years old, The Monk shocked contemporary audiences with its explicit sexuality and violent themes—becoming a hugely popular work and a classic of the Gothic horror genre. The novel relates the story of a pious monk who succumbs to his sexual urges, setting into motion a series of events beyond his ability to control. Lewis later regretted the book’s salacious elements, but The Monk exercised tremendous influence over the later development of the Gothic genre.
Content Note: This book addresses sexual violence, including rape and incest.
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 4, Tuesday, September 9: Eliza Parsons, The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793)
Matilda Weimar flees her lecherous and incestuous uncle and seeks refuge in the ancient Castle of Wolfenbach. Among the castle’s abandoned chambers, Matilda will discover the horrifying mystery of the missing Countess of Wolfenbach. But when her uncle tracks her down, can she escape his despicable intentions?
This is a longer novel, so leave yourself time to read and enjoy prior to our book club meeting! There is no obligation to have read the entire book before our September meeting, though the discussion will contain spoilers.
Content note: This novel explores themes of sexual violence.
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 5, Tuesday, October 14: Francis Lathom, The Midnight Bell: A German Story (1798)
Young Alphonsus Cohenburg enters his mother’s bedroom and finds her covered in blood. She tells him his uncle has murdered his father and orders him to flee Cohenburg castle forever to save his own life!
A disconsolate exile, Alphonsus wanders the earth seeking the means of survival, first as a soldier, then a miner, and finally as sacristan of a church, where he meets the beautiful Lauretta. They wed and establish a home together, and everything seems to promise them a happy future. But their domestic tranquility is shattered when a band of ruffians kidnaps the unfortunate Lauretta! Alphonsus must solve the mystery of Lauretta’s disappearance and the riddle of his mother’s strange conduct. And when he hears that ghosts inhabit Cohenburg castle, tolling the great bell each night at midnight, the mystery only deepens….
One of the greatest of all Gothic novels, The Midnight Bell (1798) features a blend of fast-paced action and spine-tingling suspense, pervaded throughout by a tone of profound melancholy. This edition, the first in forty years, features a new introduction by David Punter, one of the world’s foremost experts on Gothic literature.
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 6, Tuesday, November 11: Regina Maria Roche, Clermont (1798)
Clermont is the story of Madeline, a porcelain doll of a Gothic heroine, who lives in seclusion from society with her father, Clermont, whose past is shrouded in mystery. One stormy night, their solitude is interrupted by a benighted traveler, a Countess who turns out to be a friend from Clermont’s past.
Madeline goes to live with the Countess to receive her education, but her new idyllic life soon turns into a shocking nightmare. Ruffians attack the gentle Countess, and Madeline is assaulted in a gloomy crypt. And to make matters worse, a sinister stranger appears, threatening to reveal the bloody truth of Clermont’s past unless Madeline marries him. Can she avoid the snares of her wily pursuers, solve the mystery of her father’s past, and win the love of her dear De Sevignie?
[SOLD OUT] Meeting 7, Tuesday, December 9: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (written 1803, published 1818)
The final book of the Ladies of the House of Love 2025 season is Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey—part homage to, part satire of, the Gothic genre. Written over the span of many years, Northanger Abbey was published only after Jane Austen’s death. The work is replete with references to Gothic novels, including many that the club has read in previous months.
The book traces the adventures of Catherine Morland, daughter of a rural clergyman with an abiding love of Gothic fiction. The teenager falls victim to her over-active imagination when she visits Northanger Abbey, the country seat of her friends the Tilneys, where reality and fiction become blurred in Catherine’s impressionable mind.
Following our discussion of Northanger Abbey, the Ladies of the House of Love will celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday with a party in the historic Rosenbach house!
Book Purchase
The Rosenbach has partnered with The Head & The Hand (H&H Books) to supply copies of book club selections at reasonable prices. Order your books here. Learn more about H&H Books here.
Facilitators
Dr. Petra Clark is a librarian, educator, and literary historian. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Delaware in 2019 with a specialization in Victorian literature and art, particularly focusing on magazines created by and for women during the late 19th century. Petra has taught college courses on everything from research writing and feminist literature to comics history and monster media, as well as a recent Rosenbach course on the artist Aubrey Beardsley. She currently works in the Special Collections department at the University of Delaware Library, but when she isn’t haunting the rare books stacks, she can usually be found reading creepy fiction with her cats.
Dr. Samantha Nystrom is an avid fan of reading, painting, baking, playing Scrabble, and analyzing stories. She learned how to do such narrative pondering during her time at the University of Delaware, where she received her PhD in English Literature. While at UD, she taught classes ranging from film studies to British Literature to composition, which focused on how identities are constructed and represented. Her class on British Literature, for example, focused on texts with the monstrous other, asking students: Who is the true monster? Her research asked questions about the role gardens and landscapes had in constructing personal, national, and imperial identities within 19th-century Britain; her work on Walter Scott and Gothic landscapes and architecture was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Studies in Romanticism. She currently lives in New Jersey with her vampiric cat, Percy, and is a writer at Jefferson.
Dr. Alexander Lawrence Ames, Director of Outreach & Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, vividly recalls his teenage experiences with Gothic literature: terrifying himself so thoroughly with J.S. LeFanu’s Uncle Silas that he dared not leave his bedroom, falling under the spell of Mrs. Radcliffe’s enchanting countrysides in The Romance of the Forest, feeling the pangs of youthful longing for the noble young Valancourt in The Mysteries of Udolpho, and hearing Mr. Rochester’s voice on the wind in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Dr. Ames will lead artifact show-and-tell sessions at each meeting of Ladies of the House of Love, to help club members situate book club selections in the context of the Rosenbach’s collections. When not hosting book clubs or curating Rosenbach exhibitions, Dr. Ames is likely playing haunting melodies on his Celtic harp or strolling pensively across the castle grounds as twilight breaks.