About the book: 1993 / The collection offered to the attention of readers brings together works that, with some degree of convention, can be called “Gothic prose” (the origin of the term is from the English classical literature of the late 18th century). This prose has a specific flavor: gloomy and mysterious adventures, events occurring at the will of higher, unknown forces, the inevitability of fate in human destiny. But a characteristic feature of the English Gothic novel, especially the second half of the 19th century, is that mysterious, enigmatic, otherworldly phenomena are organically combined in them with ordinary, recognizable concrete realistic features of reality. This fusion, introducing an artistic measure into the description of the supernatural, unusual , only enhances the aesthetic impression and draws the reader into the orbit of the events described. An obligatory element of “Gothic” novels and stories is a mystery, often connected with a crime, and its disclosure, which, however, unlike a detective story, may never happen, as well as a romantic story linked to the main plot action.