- Oscar Wilde

“Let be not a tragedy worse than that of mine own nature/For woe shall thy heart beat only for thine affection/Oh cursed beauty thou art the artist of my pain/Love lives not in thy body but in mine soul for shall I devote my every breath to thee”

The urge to learn every language and play every instrument and travel the world and live through every historical time period and be a writer and a poet and an actor and

there are a great deal too many books of which I have discovered for there to be only twenty-four hours in a day…far to little time I say

“i will live a hundred lifetimes if it means that in one of them i can sit beside you and- even if just for a moment- know that you are mine.”

“then let this be the hundredth one and no more- for there is no life of mine where you are not beside me.”

- Kavya Dixit

The Ultimate Dark Academia Book Recommendation Guide Ever

The title of this post is clickbait. I, unfortunately, have not read every book ever. Not all of these books are particularly “dark” either. However, these are my recommendations for your dark academia fix. The quality of each of these books varies. I have limited this list to books that are directly linked to the world of academia and/or which have a vaguely academic setting.

Dark Academia staples:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Dead Poets Society by Nancy H. Kleinbaum

Vita Nostra by Maryna Dyachenko

Dark academia litfic or contemporary:

Bunny by Mona Awad

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

White Ivy by Susie Yang

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

Attribution by Linda Moore

Dark academia thrillers or horror:

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

Dark academia fantasy/sci-fi:

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

Dark academia romance:

Gothikana by RuNyx

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

Dark academia YA or MG:

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Crave by Tracy Wolff

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Dark academia miscellaneous:

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip

“Maybe forever was a word meant for memories not people.”

-unknown

oh to live in a victorian styled home with orange tinted lamps that flicker in the evening as paintings of obscure aesthetic origins line the walls of the hallway where i can pretend to be sherlock holmes pacing before the bookshelves and scattered papers trying to uncover the truth behind the age old murder of the old owner…

-unknown

“Oh to be loved by a writer…written about endlessly, ardently, passionately…”