an unspeakable of the oscar wilde sort

nick | 24 | queer media studies major

[kcviii]

Underrated Dark Academia Books

because i’ve seen the same 10 books on every list and all the books are good but there’s more to dark academia than the secret history

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood - about a group of friends from university who are bound together by their destructive relationships with one seductive classmate

Vicious by V E Schwab - a mix of dark academia and superhero, this story reveals what happens when a student goes too far in trying to prove his theory

Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan - a group of university friends go through a harrowing experience when one of their friends is murdered; very reminiscent of the secret history while still being fresh and original; an own voices queer story

please add on any other stories you feel are underrated in the dark academia community!

[fightingfamiliarity]

gay shakespeare play coming out online tomorrow i’m vibrating!!!

(link for those interested)

[william-shakespeare-official]

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version, here's a 2017 version.

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version. Here's Kenneth Brannagh's 2006 one.

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston. Here's the Ralph Fiennes 2011 one.

Cymbelline: Here's the 2014 one.

Hamlet: the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. The 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. The 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1969 Williamson-Parfitt-Hopkins one is there, and the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation, the Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 2000 Ethan Hawke one is here. 2009 Tennant's here. And have the 2018 Almeida version here. On a sidenote, here's A Midwinter's Tale, about a man trying to make Hamlet.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one. A theater Live from the late 2010's here.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here. The 1953 Orson Wells one is here.

Macbeth: Here's the 1948 one, there the 1955 Joe McBeth. Here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery, and the 1966 BBC version is here. The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here, here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. The 1988 BBC one with portugese subtitles, and here the 2001 one). Here's Scotland, PA, the 2001 modern retelling. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. Rave Macbeth for anyone interested is here. And 2017 brings you this.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here. Hugo Weaving here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie with Al Pacino. The 2001 movie is here.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version. Have the 1986 Duncan-Jennings version here. 2019 Live Theater version? Have it here!

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version. If you want a more meta approach, here's the commentary for the Tennant version. 1997 one here.

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier. The 1995 one with Ian McKellen is no longer available at the previous link but I found it HERE.

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version. Here's a stage production. 1954 brings you this. The french musical with english subtitles is here!

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1980 BBC version here and the 1988 one is here, sorry for the prior confusion. The 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here, and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. This one I'm not quite sure what it is or when it's from, it's a modern retelling.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one. Theater Live did a show of it in the late 2010's too.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, here for the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: have the 2018 one here. The BBC version is here.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

[gardenvarietyhuman]

💥🙌👏

[ineffablebookgirl]

Well shit, Henry Jenkins, out here in 1997 dropping truth bombs

[addressmysol]

Oh hey I need this for a research paper I'm writing, thank you!

[angstbotfic]

i mean he had been out here since 1988 dropping such bombs:

"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

there are even some earlier works in fan studies but that’s what i have ready to hand. 

[reallyndacarter]

Very interesting.

[doubledecks]

“While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.”

— Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)

Someone put it into words. I gotta sit down

[newskinfortheoldceremony1974]

Y do essays need conclusions like u just read that bro

[odetobillyhoe]

Donna Tartt visiting William Faulkner’s grave, photographed by Maude Clay.

[centuriesbehind]

[hedonisticacademia-deactivated2]

Lemaire at the École de Médecine

fall 2016 .

[the-sky-loves-you]

Trying dark academia hairstyles on my kinky hair 

[modelsof-color]

Yassine Jaajoui by Jason Hetherington for Observer Magazine - November 2020

[spectrophobick]

not so gentle reminder that academia belongs to the queer, the weary, the women, the people of color, the poor, the ill just as much as it does the rich, the white, the privileged. if your academia isn't accessible, i don't want it.

[velvetcloak]

elie saab | fall 2020

[thomastudies]

recent instagram posts from me | feel free to follow my instagram account : @thomreads

[lord-des-fleurs]

[almostreading]

Fall outfits

[sophielovesbooks]

Sophie’s Dark Academia Rec List

In honour of my favourite genre, have a very personal, very subjective recommendations list!

-        The Secret History (Donna Tartt)

The obvious choice, a classic. In my personal opinion, it’s not perfect and there are better dark academia books out there, but it has massively shaped the genre and therefore deserves recognition. Also, the aesthetic is on point! Read if you want to get a feel for the genre or if you’re simply curious.

-        If We Were Villains (M. L. Rio)

Basically a newer, better The Secret History?? Plenty of similarities, minus certain problematic bits that were present in TSH. Amazing prose, incredible characters, absolutely worth the read. A prime example of dark academia! Read if you love Shakespeare and college settings and compelling characters and drama and just beautiful writing!

-        Black Chalk (Christopher J. Yates)

Also a fairly good example of the genre, but tragically underhyped. Darker than, for example, If We Were Villains. Set at Oxford! Will mess with your head. The characters are not necessarily likeable, but interesting. The writing is fairly complex. Read for a dark academia thriller which takes the unreliable narrator to an impressive new extreme (in a good way!)

-        Truly Devious (Maureen Johnson)

A rare YA dark academia book! Read for murder and mystery and a beautiful boarding school setting as well as a really likeable main character! Due to its nature less dark and somewhat less mature than most of the other books on this list, but if you’re looking for more of a quick and fun dark academia read, this is the one for you!

In a similar vain: The Vanishing Stair (Maureen Johnson)

Cannot actually vouch for this as I haven’t read it yet, but it’s the sequel to Truly Devious and I have heard good things.

-        The Secret Place (Tana French)

MASSIVELY underappreciated dark academia with (gasp) supernatural elements?! The most beautiful prose and funniest dialogue you will ever see. Incredible characters. Again, amazing boarding school setting and close group of female friends! (They will break your heart). Also murder. Also half of the story being told from a detective’s PoV. Read if you value good literature. Just. Read it.

-        The Likeness (Tana French)

Actually, maybe I was kidding before, maybe this book is the most underappreciated dark academia book out there? Either way, it’s my favourite. Within dark academia and within ALL OF THE BOOKS. This is it. The perfect novel. Characters that own my hearts to this day. Writing so beautiful that it had me sobbing uncontrollably on several occasions. The university it is set in is Trinity College Dublin. (Cue me being bitter that I don’t go there every single day for the rest of my life.) Very intriguing mystery, too. Hilarious dialogue. All the emotions. All the heartbreak. Just… I love it so much, okay? <3

-        The Lying Game (Ruth Ware)

Good, very good. Set in a boarding school near the ocean, but unfortunately, only the past tense story line is and we don’t get to see too much of it. Very interesting characters. Much heavier on the dark than the academia. Read if you’re looking for more of a classic murder mystery/thriller and are not too focussed on the academia. Also read for an interesting group of female friends.

-        The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler)

Very promising, but wasn’t my cup of tea at all. The setting is an American High School on the West Coast. The murder isn’t that much of a mystery. I’m mentioning it here because I know that other people love this book, even though I really didn’t. I would say don’t read, but see for yourself, I suppose.

-        The Lessons (Naomi Alderman)

Yes, okay, an interesting one. Set at Oxford, which was amazing. Interesting characters with interesting dynamics. I read it quickly and was quite entertained. But there were certain problematic bits (regarding LGBTQ+ representation and mental illness), so you’ve been warned. Not my fave, but I mostly enjoyed it while reading it.

There are a few more dark academia books on my shelves, which I unfortunately cannot include on this list, as I haven’t read them yet. One of them is “The Lake of Dead Languages” by Carol Goodman. Another is “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh. Might edit this post later to add these and more. xx

UPDATE!! (With slightly longer descriptions this time, because people are actually reading this? Reblogging even? Wow!) 

-        The Lake of Dead Languages (Carol Goodman)

THE ALL-FEMALE DARK ACADEMIA NOVEL WE ALL NEED AND DESERVE…?? The setting is A++. An all-female boarding school in the Adirondack Mountains in New York! There is a lake that features so heavily in the story, it basically counts as a main character. Told from the PoV of a teacher who used to go to the school. There are two close groups of female friends, one in the present timeline, one in the past. Both have dark, dark secrets and both fit the dark academia genre so well! Also, heavy focus on Latin rather than Ancient Greek, which I have all the love for. This one is a gem, so give it a chance!

-        Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

An actual classic, as in… first published in 1945. And it reads like it. The beginning came with beautiful vibes! Our young boy Charles starting his time at Oxford, meeting a lot of pretentious people, including one Lord Sebastian Flyte, who Charles is suspiciously fascinated by. Sebastian is the biggest dork to ever dork, carries around with him an actual teddy bear named Aloysius, the absolute madmen?? But it’s all downhill from there, with alcoholism and war and depressing times… And Oxford only really features in the first half or less.

-        People Like Us (Dana Mele)

Another rare YA dark academia!! Features a group of Mean Girls who one day, when out at night to go swimming, find one of their classmates floating dead in the lake. Which is an excellent dark academia set-up, let’s be honest. Also, sapphic girls, incredible sapphic girls with really complex relationships! Bi main character! A fun and quick read, much like “Truly Devious”. More descriptions of the beautiful boarding school buildings would have been welcome, but at least we got a few! Anyway, go forth and enjoy this little beauty.

-        Party Girls Die in Pearls (Plum Sykes)

Umm… I barely even comprehend this book’s existence? Has a prime dark academia set-up with a murdered girl in Oxford, but I still somehow DNF’d it after about 20 pages?! The main character’s name is Ursula Flowerbutton, and if you think that’s quirky and funny… good for you, you might actually enjoy this book. But you’ll also have to endure descriptions of clothes, oh, so many descriptions of clothes! And for anything unique to Oxford that might make the book fun because only those who know will know… you’ll get a footnote. So actually, everyone will know, with zero effort. Definitely not for me, but if you want to read a glossy magazine style dark academia, knock yourself out, friend!

-        The Night Climbers (Ivo Stourton)

Breath-taking! A piece of beauty! Set at Cambridge (and the campus features heavily!), a main character reminiscent of Richard Papen, an intriguing group of new friends that he would do anything to belong with. Including… climbing the buildings of Cambridge at night? Without proper equipment, just with his hands and feet?? Honestly, out of the books on this list, this one is the closest in style and maturity and characterisation to The Secret History! The writing is absolutely gorgeous, the plot fascinating. And it’s dark academia that features a non-violent crime, which works surprisingly well. All in all: A STUNNER THAT FANS OF THE SECRET HISTORY SHOULD CHECK OUT!!

-        As I Descended (Robyn Talley)

A queer, sapphic Macbeth retelling?? Also a rare YA dark academia with strong supernatural elements?! The representation is on point, with two hispanic main characters, wlw, mlm and one of the girls in the main couple being disabled! The boarding school setting is also on point (and uniquely different as the school building is actually a former plantation in Virginia). This book is so different and so spooky! It wasn’t perfect and some say the retelling didn’t work 100% (I, personally, felt that the plot slowed down a bit), but the atmosphere is amazing and the characters are pretty cool, too!

Not to worry, my quest to find and read as many DA books as possible isn’t over. So this list might be updates again some time in the future! :)