Supernatural Horror in Literature.

[polymorphikos]

Found this whilst browsing and thought it might evoke some interest. It's the lengthy essay on the Horror genre which Lovecraft wrote.

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/superhor.htm

[I, Brian]

Good to see the essay online - it's something of a long read, but the opening lines are quite asture:

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

[rune]

I've not read one of this authors books before so have got The call of Cthulhu & other weird stories on order at my library. It's one of the few books of his they have in the county and I thought it would be a good place to start

[sanityassassin]

Originally Posted by rune

I've not read one of this authors books before so have got The call of Cthulhu & other weird stories on order at my library. It's one of the few books of his they have in the county and I thought it would be a good place to start

hope you enjoy his works are very atmospheric and it is horror in its truest form the fear of the unknown and the unimagnable terrors of the night. I've read a couple of compendiums and really enjoyed them

[rune]

Originally Posted by sanityassassin

hope you enjoy his works are very atmospheric and it is horror in its truest form the fear of the unknown and the unimagnable terrors of the night. I've read a couple of compendiums and really enjoyed them

I use to read horror alot of I am hopefully that I will enjoy his authors books

[j. d. worthington]

I'm just becoming aware of the forum, and very glad to find such a range of topics. As for SHiL, I've got to admit I'd like to see some discussions of some of the works Lovecraft mentions there. I finally (over a 30 year period) put together all of this except for one or two items he mentions by title, and several things by various authors he only mentions by name (Wilkie Collins, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Lady Wilde, Maurice Level, etc.) -- and have begun working my way through this massive amount of material in the order he has them. One thing I've seen is how many divergent streams come from one idea, and then how many writers over time flow back into some of the same themes; and how certain ideas simply seem to spark several writers at the same period, often unaware of the others' work. One possible example is Walter Scott mentioning in his notes for "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (Canto I, l.120) the old belief that a necromancer's shadow "is independent of the sun" and frequently the best of these do not cast a shadow due to their bargains with the infernal powers, and how this was also the theme of Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl" (mentioned in the original 1927 version of HPL's essay) which came out at about the same time.

There are also various writers who influenced Lovecraft himself that are seldom mentioned, from the Gothic writers like Radcliffe -- whose Burkean "sublime", I'd say, permeates HPL's aesthetic of the weird tale (after all, the earliest such stories he heard were from his grandfather who, in his own words, "obviously drew most of his imagery from the early gothic romances -- Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, &c.") to such novels as Mary Shelley's "The Last Man" or the recently reprinted "The Thing in the Woods" by Harper Williams (a pseudonym for the person who wrote, if you can believe it, "The Velveteen Rabbit"!).

Sorry to be so lengthy, but my point is -- is anyone else out there into this sort of thing? If so, there could be some very interesting discussions on the topic. Anyone care to jump in?

[Sibeling]

I've read the essay several times - it was a really valuable text for my BA paper, though my paper wasn't connected with Lovecraft.

The essay is really interesting because it deals with the development of horror fiction in a comprehensive way and does not regard horror literature as an inferior genre.

However, I don't thin I will read many of the books he mentioned - most of these are old and probably would not be so interesting. I have tried reading Gothic novels and I found out that they were boring - just pages and pages of slimy walls, gloomy castles, and eerie sounds.

[j. d. worthington]

Probably the best things for you to tackle would be those that are further removed from the Gothics. I wouldn't suggest Bulwer's novels (though "The Haunters and the Haunted; or, the House and the Brain" is certainly worth reading), but such things as Le Fanu onward would be more likely to appeal -- especially from about the 1860s on, when some of the greatest writers in the field were working. A great number of these are definitely worth reading, and the majority were writing in the shorter forms (short stories, novellas, novelettes) rather than novels; though some of the novels that came out of this period might also be things you'd enjoy.

[brsrkrkomdy]

Okay, so you wanna know about the authors Lovecraft has mentioned? Here are these he's mentioned:

Edgar Allen Poe
Ambrose Bierce
William Hope Hodgson
Algernon Blackwood
J. Sheridan LeFanu
M.R. James
Robert W. Chambers
Emile Erckmann & Alexandre Chatrian
E.F. Benson
Horace Walpole
Matthew Lewis
Ann Radcliffe
Charles Maturin
Hans Heinz Ewers
Gustav Meyrink
Theophile Gautier
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
W.W. Jacobs
Charles Dickens
Irvin S. Cobb
Robert Louis Stevenson
Guy De Maupassant
Leonard Cline
Lord Dunsany
Clark Ashton Smith
Edward Lucas White
Ralph Adams Cram
Arthur Machen
Rudyard Kipling
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
F. Marion Crawford
Robert E. Howard
Daphne DuMurier
M.P. Shiel

[brsrkrkomdy]

I've read one book of stories by Erckmann & Chatrian, THE INVISIBLE EYE from Ash Tree Press. They're not Gothic although one novella has the makings of a Gothic but it's still a very good weird story of sorts. One of the writing duo is a German and the other's French. They've not only written stories scattered here and there but plays, novels, even a bio of Napoleon Bonaparte. They've been best friends till they broke up in bitterest of terms.
I've yet to find Theophile Gautier's works besides "The Foot Of the Mummy". Same with Hans Heinz Ewers and Edward Lucas White. As for Gustav Meyrink, The Golem is still available which I already have as well as four more of his novels but no short story collection.
You have to remember that some of these writers are hard to find that you'd have to keep an eye out for them.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by brsrkrkomdy

Okay, so you wanna know about the authors Lovecraft has mentioned? Here are these he's mentioned:

Edgar Allen Poe
Ambrose Bierce
William Hope Hodgson
Algernon Blackwood
J. Sheridan LeFanu
M.R. James
Robert W. Chambers
Emile Erckmann & Alexandre Chatrian
E.F. Benson
Horace Walpole
Matthew Lewis
Ann Radcliffe
Charles Maturin
Hans Heinz Ewers
Gustav Meyrink
Theophile Gautier
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
W.W. Jacobs
Charles Dickens
Irvin S. Cobb
Robert Louis Stevenson
Guy De Maupassant
Leonard Cline
Lord Dunsany
Clark Ashton Smith
Edward Lucas White
Ralph Adams Cram
Arthur Machen
Rudyard Kipling
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
F. Marion Crawford
Robert E. Howard
Daphne DuMurier
M.P. Shiel

I'm not sure that's what anyone here was getting at, really. It was more a discussion of the essay, and of the writers and their work, rather than a list. Incidentally, it's not Daphne Du Maurier, but her grandfather, George Du Maurier (who wrote the novel Trilby, upon which Svengali was based; he was also a cartoonist for Punch). When Lovecraft first wrote the article, Daphne would have been between 19 and 20 years old, and would have only been 27 when he did the final revisions on it, by which point she only had three novels published: The Loving Spirit (1931), I'll Never Be Young Again (1932), and Julius (1933), and one non-fiction book, Gerald (1934). (It would, however, be very interesting to know what he would have thought of some of her later work....)

There's also a much longer list of writers listed in SHiL, not to mention those he talks about in his letters.... (Howard, though, wasn't mentioned in the essay; he was too "pulp" to be included, as Lovecraft was writing a piece of serious literary scholarship, and the pulps at that time were considered beneath notice. Smith is mentioned not only because of his friendship with HPL, but because he had been recognized a major poet by such figures as George Sterling and Ambrose Bierce (among others) and the only selection of his stories mentioned is the small book, The Double Shadow... those published in the pulps are not.

However, I'm curious: which of these writers have you read, and what were your thoughts on them -- or on the essay itself, for that matter?

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by brsrkrkomdy

I've read one book of stories by Erckmann & Chatrian, THE INVISIBLE EYE from Ash Tree Press. They're not Gothic although one novella has the makings of a Gothic but it's still a very good weird story of sorts. One of the writing duo is a German and the other's French. They've not only written stories scattered here and there but plays, novels, even a bio of Napoleon Bonaparte. They've been best friends till they broke up in bitterest of terms.
I've yet to find Theophile Gautier's works besides "The Foot Of the Mummy". Same with Hans Heinz Ewers and Edward Lucas White. As for Gustav Meyrink, The Golem is still available which I already have as well as four more of his novels but no short story collection.
You have to remember that some of these writers are hard to find that you'd have to keep an eye out for them.

My apologies... you posted an answer to my question while I was working on my own post.... You're one of only a handful of people I've run into who have read Erckmann-Chatrian; though I have the book you mention, I've not yet read it (it's on the TBR shelves), but I understand the stories HPL read were considerably less than that volume, which offers quite a nice selection of their work. (A lot of the stories he comments on he read in Julian Hawthorne's 10-volume Lock & Key Library.).

Gautier -- there's a volume called The Works of Theophile Gautier which had multiple printings, which has all the stories he mentions in it. It's been out of print for a long time, but if you check online or through the used bookstores, you may be able to find a copy for very little.

Ewers is almost impossible to find, save for "The Spider", which has been included in many anthologies (and which may have influenced "The Haunter of the Dark" in some ways). Alraune and The Sorcerer's Apprentice are rather difficult to come by, and the editions HPL was familiar with, I believe, were those illustrated by Mahlon Blaine, which are astronomical in price. There has been a more recent (unillustrated) edition of Alraune, I understand, though I'm not sure of when it was released.

There is supposed to be a volume of stories by Edward Lucas White coming out sometime in the next couple of years, last I heard, collecting his best work and edited (I believe) by S. T. Joshi. Otherwise, you can pick up a copy of his Lukundoo and Other Stories (1927) and The Song of the Sirens (1919) for a fairly reasonable price if you look; there've also been a couple of posthumous collections of his work through Midnight House: The House of the Nightmare (1999) edited by John Pelan and Sesta and Other Strange Stories (2001) edited by Lee Weinstein, but Midnight House books are a bit pricey....

As for the others... a lot of them are once more becoming available (Cline's The Dark Chamber, for instance, is available again. A lot of the smaller presses and POD publishers are reviving these the last few years, and the majority of the older writers (the Gothics, Le Fanu, etc.,) are seeing print again, and there does seem to be some interest, so we may be lucky enough to see most of these available again. (I see that Hippocampus Press, for instance, will be putting out Ransome's The Elixir of Life around 2008; and there's supposed to be a new edition of Ralph Adams Cram's Black Spirits and White out through Tartarus Press, I believe; you can also find L. P. Hartley's stories in The Collected Short Stories of L. P. Hartley; ditto for Benson and James.)

[Sibeling]

It would take a lifetime to read all the authors he mentions in the essay, and quite a lot of them are not easy to find.

But at least I have read some of the authors. I've read lots of Poe's storeis for my BA paper, I've read Kipling's and R.L. Stevenson's books, but only those for kids, one Lord Dunsany's novel (and it was awfully boring, so I won't read his texts again), and one Gautier's novel, which was not connected with horror literature, but more with Romanticism.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Sibeling

It would take a lifetime to read all the authors he mentions in the essay, and quite a lot of them are not easy to find.

But at least I have read some of the authors. I've read lots of Poe's storeis for my BA paper, I've read Kipling's and R.L. Stevenson's books, but only those for kids, one Lord Dunsany's novel (and it was awfully boring, so I won't read his texts again), and one Gautier's novel, which was not connected with horror literature, but more with Romanticism.

On Dunsany -- I'm curious: which novel? What HPL was referring to (and preferred) were his early short stories, which are quite a different experience from his novels; such collections as The Gods of Pegāna, Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, etc., and his plays, Plays of Gods and Men and Five Plays. Those are well worth reading, but be prepared for some very rich prose....

As for the Stevenson -- Lovecraft was none-too-fond of Stevenson, but did recognize his place in the development of the horror tale; most of his weird tales have been collected together into single volume collections (though the contents sometimes vary slightly).

As I mentioned earlier, though, if you don't care for the Gothics, you'd probably best go for a lot of the later writers in the essay, such as James, Blackwood, Machen, Bierce, O'Brien, Buchan, etc.; and, as I said, a lot of them are once more becoming available....

(I'm not arguing for reading them or not -- just trying to suggest which ones to go to should you be interested, taking into consideration your earlier comments.)

[brsrkrkomdy]

Thanks for the correction on DuMaurier, I thought I saw Daphne's first name then DuMaurier. I did check with Fantastic Fiction web site. Interestingly enough, George DuMaurier not only wrote Trilby but The Martian as well before HG Wells' War Of the Worlds.
A lifetime to read these authors mentioned? I don't think so. Not to me anyway.
Anyway, Lovecraft also mentioned Bram Stoker. In case you didn't know, Barnes & Noble got a collection of Stoker's five novels printed in one big book and in a very low price. You should check that one out.
Yeah, Ewers. That one's a bitch to find. I have The Spider. Besides Alroune and Sorceror's Apprentice, there's also Vampyr. I think it's because Ewers himself was a political activist in a weird way and got himself in trouble with the Fuhrer during WWII and most of his books were tossed in a huge bonfire. He was reduced to poverty and died.
W.W. Jacobs was a British humorist wrote several books of short stories and were often out of print. He was mainly famous for the weird tale, The Monkey's Paw and was adapted a couple of times as far as I know, one for radio and the other for television. I managed to nab his book of short stories Tales Of Macabre and Suspense. (I think that's the right title.)
Lovecraft didn't mention Howard not because it's pulp. He probably didn't read his stories when he's writing this SHiL. But he did admire Howard's work besides Clark Ashton Smith's. He also mentioned Sax Rohmer in passing on a particular book.
Now, I'm kinda curious as to where the hell we could find Herbert Gorman's novel A Place Called Dagon.