Essential Horror Anthologies

[mortbury]

Originally Posted by Fried Egg

I saw many volumes from this apparently extensive series: "Pan Books of Horror".

Are they worth picking up then?

I think so.

[Lobolover]

The Vault of Evil would be a better place to ask that . Course the owner hates my guts for some reason so don't say I sent you :P

[j. d. worthington]

The Pan books concentrate more on the physical side of horror than some of the others, but they still have a fairly good quota of fine material.

I would also add that many of the anthologies edited by Hugh Lamb are well worth looking up, though a fair number have been out of print for some time and command fairly high prices in some areas. Others, however, have been brought back into print (albeit sometimes divided into two volumes), and can be found for relatively little. And, of course, if you are patient, it is amazing what you can find....

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/hugh-lamb/

Lamb has tended to specialize in searching out obscure and sometimes almost unknown little gems and oddments from the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century journals; being responsible for reviving at least some of the works of many a near-forgotten dabbler (and sometimes master) in the form....

[AlexDavis]

Pan have just re-released the original Pan Book of Horror - managed to pick one up at this year's FantasyCon event. Still has the original cover and everything...

[dlsevern]

So far for me it has to be "My Favorite Horror Story" edited by Mike Baker and Martin H. Greenberg

It has classic and modern writers alike(Lovecraft, Bierce, Hawthorne, King, Bloch, Rampo, etc).

[J Riff]

It's quiet in here, needless to say, without JD. Anybody read anything horrifying lately? I mean besides the phone bill.

[dask]

I just finished Boswell's JOURNAL OF LONDON and when he ran into "the big monstrous whore on the Strand" I was quite frightened.

[D_Davis]

Picked this up yesterday:



Has a ton of great stuff in it, including multiple stories from Lansdale, Ligotti, Wellman, Bierce, Lovecraft, Smith, and many, many more. Totally worth tracking down.

[blacknorth]

Anyone been through the brief New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural series? I think there were only two (the companion series New Writings in sf ran for many, many years), but there is some very good material in there, including an interesting early story by Robert Holdstock, The Darkness.

[Randy M.]

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural ed. Herbert Wise & Phyllis Cerf
The Dark Descent ed. David Hartwell

After those essential anthologies covering the whole of ghost/horror fiction get a bit sparse on the ground. There are other significant anthologies, like theones mentioned here earlier, Frights and Dark Forces by Kirby McCauley.

Recently Otto Penzler, a noted mystery anthologist, has been pulling together horror anthologies: The Vampire Archives and Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!; from what I've read of the stories included, those are must-haves for those monsters. (The Vampire Archives looks to me to have supplanted Alan Ryan's anthology, Vampires -- it was reissued under other titles, as well -- as the standard volume.)

Ghosts are usually popular, and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, The Oxford Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories, both edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert, are fine anthologies. I haven't read them cover to cover, yet; they're books I enjoy dipping into, which also describes two recent collections of Lovecraftian materials that seem important: The Book of Cthulhu edited by Ross Lockhart and New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran.


I find it easier to come up with a list of essential single-author collections: Start with any sizable, representative collection of the stories of E.T.A. Hoffman, Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, H. G. Wells (a good deal of his s.f. could easily be argued to be horror; Great Tales ... includes two stories by him), Saki, M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson. (I don't mean to suggesst this is a complete list.)

Individual titles I'd suggest,

Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
Hauntings by Vernon Lee
The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
Supernatural Tales by Henry James
Kwaidan & Six Chinese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn
The Three Imposters & Tales of Horror and the Supernaturalby Arthur Machen
The Best of Algernon Blackwood
Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier
Northwest Smith by C. L. Moore
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith
The Travelling Grave by L. P. Hartley
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Twelve Tales of Suspense and the Supernatural by Davis Grubb
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
Nightmares and Damnations by Gerald Kersh
Alone With the Horrors by Ramsey Campbell
Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite
The Feesters in the Lake by Bob Leman
Extremities by Kathe Koja
The Two Sams by Glen Hirshberg
The Early Fears by Robert Bloch
Night's Black Agents & You're All Alone by Fritz Leiber
Revelations in Black by Carl Jacobi


Collections I haven't read or haven't finished or that only include a few (but significant) horror stories that strike me as probably essential:
The Howling Man by Charles Beaumont
Who Fears the Devil? by Manly Wade Wellman
The Fantasies of Robert Heinlein
In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner


Randy M.

[dask]

Has THE FEESTERS OF THE LAKE ever appeared in a mass market paperback, and does it contain any stories which haven't appeared in S&SF?

[Randy M.]

Originally Posted by dask

Has THE FEESTERS OF THE LAKE ever appeared in a mass market paperback, and does it contain any stories which haven't appeared in S&SF?

I don't think so. I only know of a limited run hardcover from Midnight House.

However, earlier this year the Weird Fiction Review website had "Loob" on its pages -- it's come down recently -- and the editor of Feesters..., Jim Rockhill, said he was in talks with another publisher to re-issue the collection. I think he mentioned Subterranean, but my recollection isn't all that clear. I hope he's successful. I've talked to any number of s.f./fantasy/horror readers who would love to get hold of a copy.

Also, according to ISFDB, two stories didn't appear in F&SF: "How Dobbstown was Saved" and "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming."


Randy M.

[dask]

Thanks for the info.

[Randy M.]

It occurs to me there are a few anthologies that are important if closer to the periphery of horror:

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One edited by Robert Silverberg; volume 2A edited by Ben Bova
It's debatable, I suppose, but I'd put forward that between a third and a half of the stories in these volumes is horror. For example, "Microcosmic God"; "Mimsy Were the Borogoves"; "The Little Black Bag"; "Born of Man and Woman"; "It's a Good Life"; "Fondly Fahrenheit"; "Who Goes There?"; "Vintage Season"; "With Folded Hands"

Blackwater & Blackwater 2 ed. by Alberto Manguel
The Manguels are fantasy anthologies and include stories like Hans Heinz Ewer's "The Spider," Graham Greene's "A Little Place off the Edgeware Road" and Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life" along with less familiar stories, many of them strange and dreamy rather than horrific.

The Weird ed. by Jeff & Ann Vandermeer
The Vandermeer anthology hasn't come out yet in the U.S. but the table of contents includes a lot of horror: Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," Daphne du Maurier's "Don't Look Now," Robert Bloch's "The Hungry House," and, oddly enough, Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life," among many others, and again in with a good deal of far less familiar material.


Randy M.

[Grizzgreen711]

I just began reading a more modern horror anthology called Dark Masques. It's pretty good so far, and although my favorite writer is Stephen King, this features stories from many different horror writers. Stevie only has one.

Again, Dark Masques, if anyone wants to read it.