The aim of GOTICA, the new book series published by Skira, is to bring back literature classics of the horror genre to the readers’ attention. These books not only belong to a specific literary genre, but they are also part of high quality literature heritage in general.
Skira gave special attention to the choice of the translations, mantaining the novels’ classical appeal, and to the iconographic setting as well. The ligature is made with black imitlin covered carton with golden engravings. The boarders of the pages are painted black, whereas the logo of the book series -an ouroboros snake which is a symbol of a continuos resurgence- is gold printed on the cover at its top right. Every book contains a brief chapter that aims to explain to the readers the visual features and the iconographic background laying behind the origins of the novels and their myths.
The first two titles of the series reunite the myths of the Vampyre and the Golem.
Vampyres is a collection of three different novels by Stoker, Le Fanu and Polidori, whereas the second title is The Golem by Gustav Meyring, one of the greatest novels of the Cacania (an acronym deriving from the Austro-Ungarian Empire).
Still to be published are Vathek by William Beckford -a novel about the illusion of controlling life and death- The Monk by M.G. Lewis -which contains and intensifies most of the themes and symbols of the Gothic genre (castles, abbeys, ghosts, violence, rapes, incest and demons)- and The Caste of Otranto by Horace Walpole, possibly the first gothic novel ever published.
