Examples of this form of fiction are now rare, surviving only in a few collections. One of the collections where a number of gothic bluebooks have been preserved is the
Corvey Library. They measured about three and a half to four inches wide and six to seven inches high. Almost all were abridgements of full-length gothic novels, usually without change of the title or characters' names from the original. Gothic bluebooks were usually either thirty-six or seventy-two pages long, selling for either sixpence or a shilling respectively. These short forms of the Gothic were not popular with critics, with some deeming them as the toxic literary waste of their time period. Like the gothic novel, gothic bluebooks fell into two general groups. One featured a background with a monastery or convent, following novels like
The Monk or
The Italian, and the other group featured the gothic castle, following novels such as
The Castle of Otranto and
The Mysteries of Udolpho. which was just one page long. Gothic bluebooks remained a popular trade through the first decade of the 19th century. ==Popularity among writers==