They confront Bunny while hiking, and Henry pushes him into a ravine to his death. No longer able to meet Bunny's demands, and fearing that he'll expose them as his mental state deteriorates, Henry convinces the group to kill Bunny.
Bunny found out by chance and has been blackmailing the group. Richard learns the truth from Henry: the clique, minus Richard and Bunny (and with Julian's approval), held a Dionysian bacchanal in the woods near Francis's country estate and Henry accidentally killed a farmer. Bunny constantly insults the others and begins behaving erratically. In the new year, tensions between Bunny and the group worsen. He nearly dies from hypothermia and pneumonia, but is rescued when Henry returns unexpectedly. Though Henry seems to have a strained friendship with Bunny, they spend the winter break together in Rome, while Richard lodges in an unheated warehouse. The group are devoted to Julian, who prevents them from taking courses outside of the Classics department. Richard enjoys his new status as a member of the clique, but notices several odd behaviors from the others: they seem to constantly suffer small injuries, boil strange plants on the stove, and attempt to hide bloody clothing. After Richard helps them with a translation, they give him advice on endearing himself to Julian, and Richard is accepted into his classes. Richard finds he cannot enroll in the classes of the sole Classics professor Julian Morrow, who limits enrollment to a hand-picked clique: twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, Francis Abernathy, Henry Winter, and Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran. Richard Papen leaves his hometown of Plano, California, to study literature at the elite Hampden College in Vermont. The book has since been credited as popularizing the growth of the dark academia literary sub-genre. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition (as opposed to the usual 10,000 order for a debut novel) and the book became a bestseller. The novel was originally titled The God of Illusions, and its first-edition hardcover was designed by the acclaimed New York City graphic designer Chip Kidd, and Barbara de Wilde.
The novel explores the circumstances and lasting effects of Bunny's death on the academically and socially isolated group of classics students of which he was a part. The Secret History is an inverted detective story narrated by one of the six students, Richard Papen, who reflects years later upon the situation that led to the murder of their friend Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran – wherein the events leading up to the murder are revealed sequentially. Set in New England, the campus novel tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at Hampden College, a small, elite liberal arts college located in Vermont based upon Bennington College, where Tartt was a student between 19. The Secret History is the first novel by the American author Donna Tartt, published by Alfred A.
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