The fascination with dark and deathly threatening spaces, with looming towers and bloody deeds, is now accepted as characteristic of contemporary fantasy and fantastic fictions for children and adolescents. Although this fascination dates back to the gothic genre of the mid-18th century, at that time, the gothic genre was not regarded as suitable for children or young persons in general. However, many young authors' first literary attempts were linked to the gothic genre, and child characters were employed in many of their novels, thereby transforming the gothic into a domain with a predilection for youth.

The aim of this book is to rediscover, present and analyze the usage of children in the gothic genre, spanning a period of 60 years from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) to Charles Robert Maturin's Albigenses (1824). The Gothic Child is almost exclusively based on primary sources. It examines children and childhood in a new light and updates the current definition of the gothic genre by adding to it the archetype of the gothic child. The book also contains analyses of selected films from the 20th and 21st centuries and links the major child-related themes and motifs in them to the 18th and 19th-century representation of the child.