"Supernatural Horror in Literature" -- Online Sources for Works Referenced

[j d worthington]

Many thanks, Lobo! I knew that had been online, but I hadn't been able to trace it. And, as I look at the other listings in their library, I hope you don't mind if I post a link to that general site here, as it is an excellent resource for horror and fantasy:

Bran's Island

Thanks again for bringing that one -- certainly one of my favorites of Wakefield's tales -- in....

 

[Lobolover]

Juist a warning though . DO NOT read "The terrible parchment" by Wellman . It's a horrible Lovecraft pastiche which just has unoriginal blabings about the "horror" of what's insie the thing and then blasting it away with Holy Water . Prety much the worst thing I ever read .

I'm not sure, but there's also "The Hounds of Tindalos" present on that site , if it was mentioned .

Ps: you thought about linking things Lovecraft thought of puting in the essay, but then did not ? Cause there's "The undying thing" by Barry Pain .

 

[j d worthington]

As you know the link for that, I'll let you do the honors at this point -- and thanks. It's a possibility, definitely; but I'll need to do that piecemeal, as there are things mentioned in his correspondence that (iirc) didn't necessarily make it into a formal list he was drawing up....

 

[Lobolover]

On should note that some of the works Lovecraft mentioned were not supossed to be a part of th essay per se, like Northanger Abbey . Others, he simply called out on being horrible .

 

[j d worthington]

On should note that some of the works Lovecraft mentioned were not supossed to be a part of th essay per se, like Northanger Abbey . Others, he simply called out on being horrible .

I'd take issue with that concerning Northanger Abbey. It was very much a part of the essay, as he was discussing how the Gothic had, by that point, become so insular and incestuous that it became very fair game for parody -- which Ms. Austen did delightfully, even affectionately, well. It remains still one of the best and most intelligent of such responses to a genre which was becoming quite moribund, and so an important part of the history of the weird tale, even if it is not weird in itself.

And yes, he did remark that several of the others were quite bad -- including Lewis' The Monk, when taken as a whole... as well as most of the books at the beginning of the "Aftermath" chapter. These would include the Horrid Mysteries, Children of the Abbey (which is actually not that bad, but scarcely a weird tale, however strongly influenced by them), Zofloya, and Shelley's little essays into the form... as well as G. W. M. Reynolds' pieces. I've read all but one of these (Faust: A Romance of the Secret Tribunals, which I've not been able to track down), and I have to agree with him, in the main. Zofloya can be fun, and it's certainly the best of the bunch, but it is often dreadfully silly, melodramatic, and confusingly written. As for Shelley's two pieces -- which are indeed imitations of Zofloya, among other things... as stories, the less said about them the better... he even completely plagiarizes the ending of Zofloya in one of them, to the point where the phrasing is almost ridiculously similar. They do have their points when it comes to a study of Shelley, or the literature of the period, but otherwise... they're tripe.

On the other hand, Lovecraft was less than impressed with some writers who are titans in the field, such as Le Fanu. He also didn't much care for Wells' weird work, finding the handling quite tame. (I don't always agree with him on this one, and definitely don't when it comes to Le Fanu.) He never cared much for Scott, either, putting him in with other Romantics whose work he felt was artificial and forced, but some of Scott's work (and that of Stevenson, another writer he rather scorned in general) did merit his approbation.

Lovecraft was definitely one of the greatest theorists the field has seen since Poe, but he did have his blind spots, as well as his strengths....

 

[Lobolover]

Concerning Zofloya and the Shelley pieces - perhaps you could share your sentiments a bit more on them, considering they are not availible online at the moment and people would have to buy them to find out .

 

[j d worthington]

Zofloya I couldn't find, no, but the Shelley pieces I posted a link to:

Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne:

http://books.google.ie/books?id=V8fTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=g bs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

As for my feelings about them... I pretty much summed those up above. A synopsis of Zofloya? It's been too long since I read it for me to remember details, added to which I do recall that it had a little bit from The Monk, a little bit from several of Ann Radcliffe's novels, a dash of this novel and a pinch of that... in other words, it was a hodgepodge of a number of previous Gothic works, with a fair amount of Marlowe's Faustus thrown in for good measure. After a while, the lesser Gothics tend to blur into one another for that very reason: they repeated the same patterns and ideas over and over ad nauseam -- much the way certain types of fantasy have in the last few decades, as I've remarked elsewhere -- which simply led to them becoming bland, repetitive, and frankly dull after a while... something the Gothic was never originally intended to be....

Hence, Lovecraft's comments are, in the main, right on the mark.

Oddly, I've read the "seven horrid novels" mentioned in Austen's Northanger Abbey, and found that several of those were actually better than some of these better-known works (or works by better-known writers, such as Shelley). Granted, Horrid Mysteries was absolutely teeth-gratingly bad, while The Necromancer of the Black Forest was alternately rather interesting and painfully stupid. But some of the others, while not great works, had a considerable charm and some fine writing....

The Literary Gothic has a page on Ms. Dacre, though, which provides some reviews of Zofloya:

The Literary Gothic | Charlotte Dacre

The following essay might also be of interest to those of a more academic turn of mind:

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/program/neareast/andalusia/pdf/10.pdf

This site also has a brief note on the novel early on the page:

1806 Page

Don't get me wrong: I'm very glad to see some of these lesser Gothics back in print; I think at least some of them deserve to survive; and I'm always glad to see interest in older literature, if only for the sake of a better understanding of the divagations the genre has gone through. But, for the casual reader, I would suggest reading Zofloya before tackling some of the more notable Gothics, as that way they might well enjoy it much more than would be the case otherwise.

 

[Lobolover]

I personaly read necromancer . Granted, I am getting interested to go read "Horrid Mysteries" , juust to experience it .

I do wonder if anyone would suppy all of these online .

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

It's too soon to offer any verdict on the book as a whole, but here is a wonderfully atmospheric passage early on in The Place Called Dagon by Herbert Gorman a work referenced in Lovecraft's essay. A bit of context: a doctor has been called to attend to a member of a family that commonly has no dealings with the rest of the townsfolk, and is being ridden there on horseback, late at night:

The boy said nothing but chirped to his horse and the huge beast swung in the lane and mounted the hill, slowly at first and then at a smart canter as the ascent eased its sharp angle. The blurred moon flew with them, trailing long bat-like wings of milky opacity across the crumbling stone walls and the buildings with their lurching outhouses. Beside them swept their broad shadow, a two-torsoed centaur, indistinct and formidable in outline. Looking back Dreeme could see the little town of Marlbororough stretched out like a conglomeration of dark tombs. A cool air tingling with the freshness of impending rain flowed by his face. Low trees flung chunky green arms across the twisting fences at him. They were black in the dimmed moonlight. The shaggy hoofs of the horse thudded heavily on the sand-road.

It's interesting how a prosaic scene is described in subtly weird terms; it reminds me a bit of the way GK Chesterton's Father Brown stories build up their atmosphere by finding the sinister and weird aspects in a quotidian scene.

 

[GOLLUM]

I wanted to offer my personal thanks to J.D,. for putting in the effort required to link the many online references to HPL's seminal study....

One of the best threads we have here IMO.

 

[j d worthington]

You're welcome. I'm always coming across people's comments about how they can't find so many of these and, as I spent about 30 years putting together these works in book form myself, I have great sympathy with that... and I also like to have discussions with others about these things too, so....

 

[GOLLUM]

AH.....an ulterior motive methinks......

Yes, collecting all of HPL's references would be quite an undertaking. Your collection must be worth a pretty penny, sentimental value notwithstanding. Perhaps I can procure a way to lure you out of your lair just long enough to relieve you of such a heavy burden. I mean, think of all the space you could reclaim!....

Once again, a job well done.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Several of John Buchan's works have been mentioned here; is there any reason to believe Lovecraft may have read the story, 'Space', first published in Blackwood's Magazine in May 1911? It has distinct thematic similarities with Lovecraft's story, 'From Beyond', which was written in November, 1920.

 

[j d worthington]

I haven't seen anything indicating this, no; though I'd have to go through the other letters volumes to make certain. There is no indication of such, however, in his Selected Letters or the two-volume edition of his letters to Derleth. If I recall correctly, he didn't read much of Buchan until doing his research for SHiL, which would put it in the mid-1920s. However, he did read a fair number of popular magazines in his earlier years and, if the story saw reprint from its first appearance in Blackwood, he might have come across it.

However, there are some curious examples of parallelism in HPL's work; passages in his "collaboration" with W. V. Jackson, "The Green Meadow" (the prose is all his, as is the bulk of what plot there is -- imagery and several of the ideas seem to have been a shared thing, according to his letters) strongly recall W. H. Hodgson's "Voice in the Night" -- a tale I don't believe he ever read. Even if he did, he didn't read any Hodgson until 1934 -- about 15 years after that tale had been penned. Others have also seen parallels in that piece to Blackwood's "The Willows", as I recall, though I've not seen the essay on this myself. (It is in Lovecraft Studies 19/20, an issue which I do not have.) Other examples exist here and there, as well....

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Yes, of course, Lovecraft's work did sometimes parallel things he had not read at the time of writing. Interesting that this may be an addition to that list. I wish I had the ability to sit and put together a good comparison of the two stories in question, perhaps I will make an attempt (or perhaps I will get side-tracked).

 

[j d worthington]

I will admit that this is among the (many) things I have yet to read by Buchan. I have read Witch Wood and The Runagates' Club, as well as The Thirty-nine Steps, though it has been more than twenty years ago now. However, I do have (in addition to those volumes) a collection of his best supernatural tales, which includes that one... so I may have to give that one a read in the next day or so....

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Which collection is that?

For someone who wrote such effective down-to-earth adventure yarns, there is some good stuff amongst his supernatural tales, especially 'The Grove Of Ashtoroth' which manages to be completely effective and haunting, even while I was appalled at the racial and religious business in the story. The theme of a psychological resurgence of ancestral pagan worship (or in one case Catholic worship!) informs several of Buchan's tales. By far the closest approach he makes to cosmic horror is the excellent 'Space'.

 

[j d worthington]

It is called simply Supernatural Tales, and was published by B&W Publishing, copyright 1997....

By the way... have you read Witch Wood....?

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

No, I haven't found a copy of it yet although I did scan through it online. I suppose I should set aside some funds to simply get a lot of texts you and GOLLUM have linked me to online printed out and bound for easy reading.

 

[j d worthington]

As I recall, I found my copy of the original printing for a quite reasonable price... less than I would have paid for one of the more recent reprints, as a matter of fact....

It's an interesting, if odd, little novel... and I admit to quite a fondness for it. Certainly the atmosphere there can be very powerful at times.