Supernatural Horror in Literature
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" | |
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Short story by H. P. Lovecraft | |
Text available at Wikisource | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Horror fiction essay |
Publication | |
Published in | The Recluse |
Publication type | Periodical |
Media type | Print (Magazine) |
Publication date | 1927 |
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000-word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between November 1925 and May 1927, first published in August 1927, and then revised and expanded during 1933–1934.
The essay
Lovecraft's essay ranges widely, but he first examines the beginnings of weird fiction in the early gothic novel. As a guide for what to read in the early gothic he relied partly on Edith Birkhead's 1921 historical survey The Tale of Terror, and he was also able to draw on the expertise of the great many experts and collectors in his circle. The bulk of the essay was written in New York City giving Lovecraft easy access to the resources of the city's great public libraries and also to the collections of his friends, and thus he was able to read widely and obtain obscure and rare works. His survey then proceeds to outline the development of the supernatural and the weird in the work of major writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft names as the four "modern masters" of horror: Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, and Arthur Machen. In addition to these masters, Lovecraft attempts to make the essay an encompassing survey, and thus he mentions or notes many others in passing.
Publication history
The text was first published in August 1927 in the one-issue magazine The Recluse, and copies were widely circulated.[1] It was then partly published in revised serial form in The Fantasy Fan in 1933–35. The full revised text first became easily available to the public in The Outsider and Others (1939).
Critical reception
An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia terms the work "HPL's most significant literary essay and one of the finest historical analyses of horror literature."[1] After the first publication the critic Edmund Wilson, who was not an admirer of Lovecraft's fiction, praised the recent 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".[2] David G. Hartwell has called "Supernatural Horror in Literature" "the most important essay on horror literature".[3]
References
- ^ a b Joshi, S. T.; Schultz, David E. "Supernatural Horror in Literature". An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. p. 255.
- ^ Wilson, Edmund (1994). "Afterward". H. P. Lovecraft's Book of Horror.
- ^ Hartwell, David G. (1989). The Dark Descent. Tor Books. p. 85. ISBN 0-312-93035-6.
External links
- "Supernatural Horror in Literature"—eText at the H. P. Lovecraft Archive
- "A Map on Chalkboards" – An imagemap following the chapters of the essay (containing its entire text)
- Supernatural_Horror_in_Literature public domain audiobook at LibriVox
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- "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"
- "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"
- The Cancer of Superstition
- "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
- To Quebec and the Stars
- Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
- 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
- Lovecraft studies
- Works influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos
- H. P. Lovecraft (band)
- H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
- Adaptations
- Lovecraft (crater)
- Cthulhu Macula
- Aklo
- Dream Cycle
- Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary)
- Sonia Greene (wife)
- The Thing in the Moonlight
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