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Elements drawn from the Gothic tradition were of particular interest to the mid-nineteenth-century Russian translators of Jane Eyre and The Woman in White. That interest was stimulated by the democratization of literature, the expanding market for popular fiction, and the consequent search for models from abroad. In this article, we consider how these early translators rendered the Gothic features of these novels, and especially how they intensified and exaggerated the elements of mystery and terror. We also consider contrasts in the reviewers’ responses to Bronte’s and Collins’s texts, contrasts that we argue were based on an implicit gender bias.