Supernatural Horror in Literature

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core

Jump to: navigation, search

Supernatural Horror in Literature is a long essay by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft surveying the topic of horror fiction. It was written between November 1925 and May 1927 and revised during 1933–1934. It was first published in 1927 in the one-issue magazine The Recluse.^[1] More recently, it was included in the collection Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1965).

Lovecraft examines the beginnings of weird fiction in the gothic novel (relying greatly on Edith Birkhead's 1921 survey The Tale of Terror) and traces its development through such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe (who merits his own chapter). Lovecraft names as the four "modern masters" of horror: Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, and Arthur Machen.

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia terms the work "HPL's most significant literary essay and one of the finest historical analyses of horror literature."^[2] Upon reading the essay, M. R. James proclaimed Lovecraft's style "most offensive".^[3] However, Edmund Wilson, who was not an admirer of Lovecraft's fiction, praised the essay as a "really able piece of work...he had read comprehensively in this field—he was strong on the Gothic novelists—and writes about it with much intelligence".^[4] David G. Hartwell has called Supernatural Horror in Literature "the most important essay on horror literature".^[5]

Footnotes

↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 255.
↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 256.
↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Supernatural Horror in Literature

"Supernatural Horror in Literature"—eText at the H. P. Lovecraft Archive

v t e H. P. Lovecraft
Bibliography
Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Under the Pyramids" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Miskatonic University Lovecraft Country R'lyeh
Characters	Randolph Carter Harley Warren
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
Related	Aklo Cthulhu Mythos Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture Dream Cycle Lovecraftian horror Cosmicism H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Necronomicon Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife) Lovecraft (crater) Cthulhu Macula
Category

v t e Works by H. P. Lovecraft
Cthulhu Mythos Dream Cycle
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Case of Charles Dexter Ward The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Short stories	"The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" "The Mound" "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A’the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Thing in the Moonlight"
Juvenilia	"The Mystery of the Grave-Yard" "The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars The Cancer of Superstition Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity

This article about a literary essay or essay collection is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Supernatural_Horror_in_Literature&oldid=787591"

Categories:

Hidden categories:

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Footnotes

External links

Navigation menu

Personal tools

Namespaces

Variants

Views

More

Search

Navigation

Tools