Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead

From the author of Gothic, a marvelously illustrated cultural history of graves and graveyards, from the earliest known burial sites to today's green burials

Why, how, and where do we inter our dead? How have people throughout history responded to the problem of laying their dead to rest? Roger Luckhurst sets out in search of answers in this arresting book. Taking readers on an unforgettable tour of the rich and unusual visual culture of the grave, he visits locales such as the pyramids of Giza, the catacombs and columbaria of Rome, and the cenotaphs erected to the world's war dead. Along the way, he examines the diverse role of graveyards in literature, art, film, and television.

In engaging chapters that look at all aspects of the treatment of the dead, Luckhurst covers topics ranging from early burials and the emergence of necropolises and catacombs to grave robbing, garden cemeteries, the perilous overcrowding of the urban dead, and the emergence of modern funerary culture. Exploring the cultural afterlives of burial and memorial sites in the popular imagination, he shows how graves have served as guides to the underworld, poignant dedications to those we have lost, as reminders of our own mortality, and settings in gothic horror.

Blending lively storytelling with a wealth of stunning illustrations, Graveyards is a lyrical, frequently unexpected account of the grave as a signpost to the afterlife, a site of remembrance and self-reflection, and an object of enduring fascination.

Author: Roger Luckhurst
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 10/14/2025
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.25lbs
Size: 10.30h x 7.20w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780691278377


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/04/2025
Booklist 09/01/2025

About the Author
Roger Luckhurst's many books include Gothic: An Illustrated History (Princeton) and Zombies: A Cultural History. He has written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books and is a regular contributor for the BBC. He is the Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.