Through the Pale Door is a bibliographical guide to the primary sources and central texts of American Gothic literature. It surveys and defines the Gothic achievements of approximately 200 American writers who were working in and were influenced by various modes of Gothicism from 1798 to 1982. The book collects, selects, identifies, and classifies all specimens of American Gothic literary activity from its initial expression at the end of the 18th century in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, to the writings of the modern masters such as H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates, and Stephen King.

The historical introduction explains and emphasizes those special characteristics, tendencies, and directions taken by the shapers of an American Gothic tradition which made it different from the British model form. The core bibliography brings together 509 entries selected to suggest the development and variety of American Gothic endeavor in both its popular and more serious manifestations. Each item in the bibliography is analytic and critical as well as synoptic in its substance with each item assigned a single number for instantaneous referencing and cross-referencing. An appendix citing the important secondary studies of American Gothicism and three indexes, an author-and-title index and an index of critics and subjects, are provided to enhance the researcher's task and to give immediate access to all of the materials of Through the Pale Door. This book is suitable for any library and can be read in its entirety by general students as a bibliographical chronicle of the American Gothic movement.