“It's difficult to overestimate the impact of Levin's work ... “Rosemary's Baby” launched a literary movement in contemporary horror that would usher in “The Exorcist,” “The Amityville Horror” and the entire early career of Stephen King. Levin brought the gothic to the contemporary world.”
    —John Warner, Chicago Tribune (2017)

The unmitigated classic that shaped the course of modern horror. Elevated Horror. Feminist Horror. Social. Queer. Outsider. Ira Levin's novel fits under all these umbrellas because of the characteristic empathy he brings to his portrayal of Rosemary Woodhouse, as she struggles against the dark forces that conspire against her.

 “There are books which document the culture and books that create it, and Rosemary’s Baby is both.”
     —Chuck Palahniuk (2011 Introduction)

With its fusing of gothic literary tradition and recognizable, modern New York, Levin's classic almost single-handedly heralded in the era of modern horror, and was recently dubbed one of the "25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years" by the New York Times.

“Rosemary's Baby is one of the most perfectly crafted thrillers ever written.” —Cherry Wilder

The slow burn tension-building. The is-it-real-or-imagined ambiguity. The dark wit. The terror of the everyday. Of one's neighbors. They all originated here. (Frequent misattribution to the 1968 film notwithstanding.)

 “Rosemary's Baby" is an all-time classic, a canonical book all suspense writers need to read for their survival and all other people should read just because.”
     —Kevin Guilfoile (Chicago Tribune, 2007)

The book's publication marked the first time since 1934's Rebecca that a horror novel appeared on Publisher's Weekly's annual best-seller list, and its supremely faithful 1968 cinematic adaptation marked only the fourth time a horror film received an Oscar (for Ruth Gordon's timeless turn as Minnie Castevet).

 “A genuine masterpiece . . . a playwright's book, in which every physical detail and line of dialogue counts.”
     —David Pringle

“Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is before, not after, the horror appears, I was struck one day by the thought (while not listening to a lecture) that a fetus could be an effective horror if the reader knew it was growing into something malignly different from the baby expected. Nine whole months of anticipation, with the horror inside the heroine!”
    —Levin (2003 Afterword)

• Ira Levin: Afterword
• Chuck Palahniuk: 2011 Introduction
• IraLevin.org: Rosemary's Baby Album
• Bustle.com: Why Ira Levin's Horror Novels Are Still So Terrifying

• Sorry, Internet – the book's actual publication date was April 13, 1967
• Levin was an ardent Hitchcock fan; we suspect character Edward Hutchins (known in-book as "Hutch") is a tip-of-the-hat to Alfred Hitchcock (known in life as "Hitch")
• In 1970, legendary film composer John Williams (Star Wars, Jaws, Schindler's List...) sought to musicalize Rosemary's Baby. Levin declined, only as – being a playwright as well as a novelist – he contemplated the possibility of writing a stage adaptation himself one day

• Feature Film (1968)
• Television Mini-Series (2014)