Supernatural Horror in Literature.

[j d worthington]

Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can track them down; they sound quite interesting. As a side note: did you ever see the adaptation of "Pigeons from Hell" on the old television series Thriller, hosted by Boris Karloff? While taking some liberties (both for time and for visual dramatic tension), I thought it was a quite good adaptation, and it had some decidedly eerie moments.... (Of course, I've not seen it in a verrrry long time, but it did make a very favorable impression.)

 

[Sibeling]

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.)

Lord Dunsany's novel I read was called The King of Elfland's Daughter. I probably should not call it boring - it had beautiful descriptions and the language was quite unusual, but when I read a book, I also want it to have some events, not just lots of descriptions about valleys and streams and castles and stars above.

Thanks for suggestion, I'll look for these authors next time I go to the book shop.

So it probably will take less than a lifetime, if I don't read all the Gothic novels and start with the good stuff.

 

[j d worthington]

I had a feeling it was that particular book. That one tends to polarize readers; while I very much like it myself, I can see where it would seem tedious to most. His short stories (on the whole), however, do that sort of thing in such short compass, and with such wit and poignancy, that they don't have time to lag -- there are a couple of exceptions, but they are very few.

Somewhere on here is a link to The Gods of Pegāna online, with Sime's illustrations. I'll see if I can track it down and post it here for you....

As for the other... I think I'd suggest looking over one or two of the novels by Ainsworth (perhaps The Lancashire Witches?) and maybe Marryat's The Phantom Ship -- both have had lots of printings, and the Marryat is still in print (I'm not sure about the Ainsworth); perhaps "The Haunted and the Haunters; or, the House and the Brain", by Bulwer-Lytton (especially if you can find the complete text, which has a rather nasty fillip at the end), as it is certainly one of the major haunted house stories; and I'd stick to the shorter works of Le Fanu, considering your feelings about Gothics... his ghost stories may be to your taste, though (Through a Glass Darkly [s.c.], or Best Ghost Stories, ed. by E. F. Bleiler). I definitely wouldn't try Varney, the Vampyre! That thing is HUGE! It can be campy fun, and has its moments of genuine eeriness, but on the whole... oh, dear!!!

Depending on how you feel about Dickens, you may enjoy some of Wilkie Collins' work -- and he also has a collection of shorter works in the field: Tales of Suspense (Tales of Mystery and Suspense is a slightly different -- I believe -- collection that might be best). I doubt you'd care much for Hoffmann, of Chamisso... though Undine, by Fouque, might appeal; Meinhold's Amber Witch... well, it's grim enough, though the older handling of the romantic element may annoy at times. De Maupassant might appeal, as might Erckmann-Chatrian; and The Golem certainly is a wonderful book.

If you didn't like Poe, I doubt you'd care for Hawthorne, but I would suggest reading some of his shorter works, especially "Young Goodman Brown", "Feathertop", "Edward Randolph's Portrait", and "The Minister's Black Veil"; you might also like "Rappaccini's Daughter". Fitz-James O'Brien's "What Was It?" is a brief but effective tale, and I think most of the work he lists from Bierce on would fit the bill.

That should cut out the vast majority of those you wouldn't find of interest... and a substantial amount of what is left is also available online, which both saves money and makes them easier to find....

 

[brsrkrkomdy]

I did see that episode from Boris Karloff's Thriller series. It used to be on the Sci Fi Channel. Love that series. That "Pigeons From Hell" adaptation did follow closely to the story. However, I was disappointed with the climactic ending. Maybe it was my expectations geared too high.

 

[Sibeling]

I had a feeling it was that particular book. That one tends to polarize readers; while I very much like it myself, I can see where it would seem tedious to most. His short stories (on the whole), however, do that sort of thing in such short compass, and with such wit and poignancy, that they don't have time to lag -- there are a couple of exceptions, but they are very few.

Is it his most popular and typical novel then?

Somewhere on here is a link to The Gods of Pegāna online, with Sime's illustrations. I'll see if I can track it down and post it here for you....

That would be nice, thanks! It's probably pretty easy to draw illustrations to his books - all the descriptions already tell the colours of everything, they are so picturesque that the artist does not need to use imagination.

As for the other... I think I'd suggest looking over one or two of the novels by Ainsworth (perhaps The Lancashire Witches?) and maybe Marryat's The Phantom Ship -- both have had lots of printings, and the Marryat is still in print (I'm not sure about the Ainsworth); perhaps "The Haunted and the Haunters; or, the House and the Brain", by Bulwer-Lytton (especially if you can find the complete text, which has a rather nasty fillip at the end), as it is certainly one of the major haunted house stories; and I'd stick to the shorter works of Le Fanu, considering your feelings about Gothics... his ghost stories may be to your taste, though (Through a Glass Darkly [s.c.], or Best Ghost Stories, ed. by E. F. Bleiler). I definitely wouldn't try Varney, the Vampyre! That thing is HUGE! It can be campy fun, and has its moments of genuine eeriness, but on the whole... oh, dear!!!

Depending on how you feel about Dickens, you may enjoy some of Wilkie Collins' work -- and he also has a collection of shorter works in the field: Tales of Suspense (Tales of Mystery and Suspense is a slightly different -- I believe -- collection that might be best). I doubt you'd care much for Hoffmann, of Chamisso... though Undine, by Fouque, might appeal; Meinhold's Amber Witch... well, it's grim enough, though the older handling of the romantic element may annoy at times. De Maupassant might appeal, as might Erckmann-Chatrian; and The Golem certainly is a wonderful book.

Thanks again for the suggestion, I'm really impressed by your knowledge about literature of those days.

If you didn't like Poe, I doubt you'd care for Hawthorne, but I would suggest reading some of his shorter works, especially "Young Goodman Brown", "Feathertop", "Edward Randolph's Portrait", and "The Minister's Black Veil"; you might also like "Rappaccini's Daughter". Fitz-James O'Brien's "What Was It?" is a brief but effective tale, and I think most of the work he lists from Bierce on would fit the bill.

That should cut out the vast majority of those you wouldn't find of interest... and a substantial amount of what is left is also available online, which both saves money and makes them easier to find....

Some Poe's stories were pretty good, those that were shorter and without descriptions of furniture and people, those that deal with psychology rather than with some supernatural events, but I'm just tired of Poe's stories - had to read lots of them for my BA paper.

But anyway, thank you very much for all the suggestions, I'm pretty sure I have seen some of the things online, so reading them is just a question of time.

 

[j d worthington]

Okay, here you go:

The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany

And here's the text for the second volume, Time and the Gods:

Online Reader - Project Gutenberg

The interesting thing is that Sime and Dunsany worked as collaborators in a way. Though it began with Sime illustrating things Dunsany had written, it then became a mixture of that and Dunsany being inspired by Sime's illustrations. Altogether, there were eight collections:

The Gods of Pegāna
Time and the Gods
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
A Dreamer's Tales
The Book of Wonder
Fifty-One Tales (a.k.a. The Food of Death)
Tales of Wonder (U.S. title: The Last Book of Wonder)
Tales of Three Hemispheres

All of these are available online, though most without Sime's illustrations (sadly), though quite a few of the illustrations can be found in the galleries at this site:

The Sidney Sime Page

There are also some of them at this site:

ARC :: Sidney H. Sime (1867-1941) :: Page 1 of 2

(Here's the Wiki page on these collections, with links to their online sources):

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for The King of Elfland's Daughter... I'm not sure that it's his most popular, but it's one of his most widely-known, perhaps (by reputation, at least), and has had several editions (all of them, save for the earliest, with an odd textual mistake, interestingly enough). I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "typical" Dunsany novel, as he went through various periods, and each was different... but he didn't do a great deal of "straight" fantasy in his later work as he did early on (there are some important exceptions, but they're not that well-known, and I've not read the majority of them myself -- yet! )

brsrkrkomdy: I can see that... I vaguely remember feeling something of that sort myself, though it's been ages since I've seen the thing. As I recall, they had to alter it slightly to avoid the "racist" element of Howard's original. Hmmm. I'd rather like to land a complete set of Thriller on DVD if it's out there......

 

[Sibeling]

Thank you for the links, I'll read it all when I have time.

 

[Lobolover]

"Hans Heinz Ewers and Edward Lucas White"

Horrormasters.com has "The snout",whil gas light stories have "Lukundoo".

Ill try to find some ONLINE Ewers.

Also,super book,ive been reading acording to it.