A Guide to Dark Academia

In celebration of October and the official start of the spooky season, I thought I'd give a brief guide to one of my favourite genres: dark academia.

Dark academia is a social media aesthetic and subculture centring around higher education, gothic buildings and being pretentious about learning (bonus points for studying the classics or English literature). Before we begin, I'm going to be clear: the point of dark academia is that it is pretentious, and the characters can be annoying and slightly ridiculous. Nevertheless, it is one of my favourite genres for the darkness that it brings to mundane (school) life. I love spooky stuff, so students murdering their classmates and secret societies dealing with forbidden knowledge are right up my alley. It isn't without its limits as a genre, as dark academia can be problematic in idealising the ancient world and the English canon of literature, areas of learning that tend to centre around white men and ignore POC authors. Despite these limitations, it has produced a number of my favourite books, starting with The Secret History in 1992.

The Secret History

TSH is perhaps the foundational book of the dark academia genre, setting the precedent for murder whilst wearing tweed jackets and ranting about the ancient greeks. Donna Tartt romanticises all aspects of University, and portrays human darkness in a subtle and fascinating way. I have seen some TikToks criticising the book for being pretentious, but I think that this is a misreading of Tartt's work as she deliberately satirises just how pompous her characters are. They might talk of lofty classical ideals, but at the end of the day all they are is murders and cowards. This is possibly the best dark academia book, but later entries into the genre are also definitely worth a read.

If We Were Villains

M.L. Rio builds on the foundations laid by Donna Tartt, focusing her story on a group of students at a drama college that exclusively studies Shakespeare. It's just like TSH (a dead classmate and a group trying to get away with murder), but instead of considering the classics, the characters constantly quote Shakespeare. Perfect for fans of English literature, the book is laid out like a Shakespearean tragedy that steadily builds to an inevitably heart-rending conclusion.

The Atlas Six

In this book Olivie Blake takes dark academia in a slightly different direction, instead approaching with a secret society dedicated to magic. I know it's a bit of a funny premise, but Blake constructs magical abilities that are almost plausibly based in science, and the combination of ancient libraries and character-driven plot (yes, the characters are all terrible people designed to be commentaries on the human condition) make this a valuable new addition to the genre.

Ninth House

Like The Atlas Six, Leigh Bardugo injects magic into her take on dark academia. In her world, Yale University has eight secret societies that practice magic. I particularly enjoy books that root their fantastical elements in the modern world, so I appreciated Bardugo giving her characters clever motivations and her magic real-world purposes; for example, employing divination (using human insides, of course) to predict the stock market. Add in gothic architecture, cold weather, and ghosts, and you have the perfect spooky autumn read.

In general I greatly enjoy pairing books with certain times of year, and since dark academia is such an atmospheric genre, the long nights and colder weather in autumn are perfect for holing up with a chai latte and listening to Hozier whilst reading books about fancy people murdering each other.