Horror Masterworks Series...

[GOLLUM]

*chuckle* It happens to the best of us (and, in my case, sometimes the not-so-best of us)... otherwise, why would I have a shelf's worth of such anthologies sitting in my place....?

Because you can?...

I confess that as much as I admire authors like Ligotti, Moorcock, Vandermeer, Campbell, Pugmire (I've not read, throwing in based on the comments here) etc... I tend to be blind-sided, indeed misty-eyed when it comes to comparing with the "big 3". I don't exactly know why but they've held a greater resonance for me personally than the more recent lumniaries. Mind you, I've always said I was born into the wrong era.....

Speaking of antholgoies, do you have/read a copy of Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors? It's something I would be loathe to ever have to part from.

 

[GOLLUM]

JD, GOLLUM: how about compiling your lists of the first 15 titles you'd like to see released in a putative Horror Masterworks series? You can include famous and obscure titles, as long as you think they're among the very best.

[FONT=&quot]Err....thanks for the vote of confidence but and I don't wish to embarrass my Texan counterpart or rain on the parade, he would be much better placed IMHO to judge the greatest/top 15 horror masterworks of all time than myself. Still, I won't shy from the suggestion and will list my top 15 horror masterworks based on what I have read. It's going to take a little time though as I want to take a considered approach, so I may not post before the end of the week.

Q: Should we be considering only novels or also novellas and shorts for this series? Considering some of the best pieces in Horror fiction may fall into these latter groupings I wasn't sure. I guess a single author collection could also be valid here as per some of the existing Masterwork series?

Cheers...
[/FONT]

 

[j d worthington]

An interesting challenge, JP. The problem (for me) is that nearly any such list for a "masterworks" sort of series would have a few too many of the classics which are easily available elsewhere, just by it being the nature of the beast and, as you note, so many of those being kept in print. So I'd have to leave out most of those and of the more famous writers discussed (Lovecraft, Poe, etc.) and even some not quite so famous but whose work is nonetheless fairly widely well-known (Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow, for instance).

With those considerations in mind, here's a (tentative) list, in no particular order:

E. H. Visiak: Medusa
Ramsey Campbell: Demons by Daylight (story collection)or his non-supernatural novel, The Face That Must Die
T. E. D. Klein: The Ceremonies
Hanns Heinz Ewers: Alraune (despite flaws, I'd still go for the Endore translation; from what little I've seen elsewhere, it is simply closer to the eloquence of Ewers' own writing)
Sax Rohmer: The Brood of the Witch-Queen
Oliver Onions: Widdershins (story collection)
Robert Aickman: either Painted Devils or Cold Hand in Mine
L. P. Hartley: The Travelling Grave (story collection)
A. E. Coppard: Fearful Pleasures (story collection)
Ray Bradbury: Dark Carnival (story collection)
John Metcalfe: The Smoking Leg (story collection)
Clive Barker: The Damnation Game
Arthur Machen: The House of Souls (story collection; following the 1906 Grant Richards edition)
Jonathan Carroll: The Land of Laughs
Karl Edward Wagner: In a Lonely Place

If I could, though, I would admit that I've always wished to see a reprint of the entirety of The Outsider and Others, by HPL. That, being one of the landmark horror volumes of all time, should be done somewhere, at some time, dammit....

 

[GOLLUM]

See what I mean?.......

Needless to say my list is going to be a little different to that.

 

[j d worthington]

Because you can?...

I confess that as much as I admire authors like Ligotti, Moorcock, Vandermeer, Campbell, Pugmire (I've not read, throwing in based on the comments here) etc... I tend to be blind-sided, indeed misty-eyed when it comes to comparing with the "big 3". I don't exactly know why but they've held a greater resonance for me personally than the more recent lumniaries. Mind you, I've always said I was born into the wrong era.....

Speaking of antholgoies, do you have/read a copy of Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors? It's something I would be loathe to ever have to part from.

Well, despite the fact that Moorcock is among my four favorite writers... my heart belongs to the earlier writers, as well. They are what I grew up on; they are what formed a large part of my earliest experiences in reading, at least of things which have held up on re-reading as an adult. So I can easily understand your position.

As for that particular anthology: yes, I do. I must admit that I find it something of a mixed bag; it by no means reprints the best tale from the given year, for instance (in fact, sometimes the story chosen is a near textbook example of bad pulp writing), but it has a substantial amount of first-rate work as well... so definitely an anthology worth looking into, especially if you happen to like the pulps.....

 

[GOLLUM]

As for that particular anthology: yes, I do. I must admit that I find it something of a mixed bag; it by no means reprints the best tale from the given year, for instance (in fact, sometimes the story chosen is a near textbook example of bad pulp writing), but it has a substantial amount of first-rate work as well... so definitely an anthology worth looking into, especially if you happen to like the pulps.....

True, not all of the stories reach the dizzy heights but for Weird Tales magazine it was the best collection I was able to get my hands on at an affordable price. Is there a better anthology specfically relating to the orginal Weird Tales magazine available?

 

[j d worthington]

True, not all of the stories reach the dizzy heights but for Weird Tales magazine it was the best collection I was able to get my hands on at an affordable price. Is there a better anthology specfically relating to the orginal Weird Tales magazine available?

I suppose that depends on what you mean. Better, as in literary quality as a whole? Probably Leo Margulies' two paperback anthologies, Weird Tales and Worlds of Weird, would fit the bill. As in "more representative", Peter Haining's Weird Tales (also split into two paperbacks upon reprinting, Weird Tales and More Weird Tales), which is so designed that it almost reads like an oversize issue of the magazine. Also, Marvin Kaye's large anthology, Weird Tales, though it doesn't strictly adhere to the earlier incarnation, comes very, very close to so doing, including having some literary classics which were reprinted in the original WT's "classics reprints" section (which, by the way, actually reprinted the entirety of Frankenstein in serial form at one point)....

This is not to denigrate the Unearthed Horrors anthology, which is, as I noted, is indeed a worthy anthology, and a bargain to boot. It is simply that I find that one less even as a whole than some of the others....

Speaking of anthologies... if we are going to include such in a possible list, I'd put in a strong vote for Boris Karloff's And the Darkness Falls..., a superb anthology long overdue for a reprint in its entirety.....

 

[GOLLUM]

Gosh...I had no idea there were so many anthologies available for Weird Tales.

I was talking more in terms of literary quality, so I'll look into Leo Margulies' anthologies, Weird Tales and Worlds of Weird. Thanks....

Given the somewhat prohibitive price of the Karloff original, I would very much like to see a reprint of this myself; moreso because I've not read it!

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

See what I mean?.......

Needless to say my list is going to be a little different to that.

Which is exactly why you should cast aside needless modesty and plunge into the fray.

 

[Fried Egg]

Hmmm...I saw a weird tales anthology in the second hand book store last time I was there. I'll have to go back and pick it up and see what's in it.

Thanks for that list J.D., lots of stuff I haven't heard of that I shall have to investigate...

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

My own list will omit certain works on the premise that they are easily obtained and would be familiar to any reasonably well-read person with some interest in horror fiction. I will however include things that are well-known enough but not easily available in the mass market; this selection will be coloured by the fact that I live in a country where only the tip of even the mass market iceberg is visible. Here goes:

1. Carmilla: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
This is actually a fairly easy work to obtain as part of the frame-story novel In A Glass Darkly, but I believe it is a work of great power and deserves to stand on its own. I considered nominating the collection Madam Crowl's Ghost instead, but I think Carmilla is just that good.

2. The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James
This selection breaks all my self-imposed rules! However, I believe that no horror library is complete without James' ghost stories. Clark Ashton Smith once described James' stories as 'formidable necromancy'. I concur.

3. Can Such Things Be: Ambrose Bierce
Another short story collection. Bierce is far from obscure, but I have not spotted a good mass-market edition of his horror fiction in stores here; there is a good collection from Dover, but distribution of Dover titles here is fairly spasmodic and unsystematic.

4. I'd second the inclusion of House Of Dreams by Arthur Machen.

5. The novellas of T.E.D. Klein. Frankly I was not as impressed with The Ceremonies as with Klein's novellas.

6. Songs Of A Dead Dreamer: Thomas Ligotti
Ligotti's horror fiction moves me as deeply as those of the classic masters of the genre; no list of horror greats is complete without a sampling, and this is as good a place to begin as any.

7. Our Lady Of Darkness: Fritz Leiber
A masterful tale of urban supernatural terror with the city itself as a sort of mystical entity.

8. Some sort of selection of the best ghost stories of Russell Kirk; there are among the best ghost stories written since the Victorian and Edwardian high-watermark and I don't believe there is a collection of them available from a mainstream publisher at present.

9. The Land Of Laughs is another one I shall second.

10. A selection of Clark Ashton Smith's horror stories; despite the Gollancz Fantasy masterworks collection, Smith still remains the only one of the Weird Tales Big Three to be terribly under-represented in mainstream editions.

11. The Tooth Fairy: Graham Joyce.
An absolute classic, not hard to get, but not firmly ensconced enough in the pantheon that it couldn't do with a bit of a boost.

12. Dark Carnival: Ray Bradbury

 

[Fried Egg]

I've got to stop coming here, I'm getting to many ideas for books to buy and with no where to put them, time to read them nor money to buy them!

 

[iansales]

Aren't many of the titles being suggested more dark fantasy than horror? To me, horror is the likes of Guy N Smith, Ramsey Campbell, James Herbert...

 

[Fried Egg]

Aren't many of the titles being suggested more dark fantasy than horror? To me, horror is the likes of Guy N Smith, Ramsey Campbell, James Herbert...

There must be a bit of a grey area between dark fantasy and horror. Quite where one ends and the other begins is probably open to debate.

For instance, many of Clark Ashton Smith's stories would probably be classed as dark fantasy rather than horror although he did write some out and out horror stories in my opinion (such as "The Second Internment"). But I would also argue that "The Dark Eidolon" should be considered horror too although most would class it as dark fantasy. But why? Does horror have to be grounded in real setting so that the reader feels that it could happen to them, or could have happened in the past? Can't a story be full of imagined worlds and creatures and still be considered a horror?

On the the hand, some stories are so grounded in a realistic setting, the elements of horror so subtle and small yet they are still labelled as "horror" despite the fact they are less overtly horific than many a dark fanatasy. For instance, "We have always lived in a castle" by Shirley Jackson.

It's a difficult demarkation but I certainly thing that dark fanatasy should be represented in a horror masterworks series to some degree as long as they have some of the crucial elements that make them horror (whatever they are).

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

What's the difference?

Then of course we could also revive the old debate about what constitutes terror vs. horror in fiction.

 

[GOLLUM]

Which is exactly why you should cast aside needless modesty and plunge into the fray.

He doth protest too much... No, as I said previously that's fair enough, which is why I'll be posting my list by end of the week. Your implied point is of course a good one, that heralding from different generational and geographical points of the compass, we're all going to come up with varying nominations that in fact will make this exercise a much more enriching one.

Case in point, I know next to nothing about T.E.D. Klein (other than by reputation) nor Russell Kirk, so already I'm feeling a beneficiary...

I concur so far regarding the choices of Machen, Ligotti, Caroll, Joyce and M.R. James and possibly Bierce and Lieber. I'm more than a little amazed and dismayed to hear that Bierce isn't more widely available in your neck of the woods though!

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

>>But why? Does horror have to be grounded in real setting so that the reader feels that it could happen to them, or could have happened in the past? Can't a story be full of imagined worlds and creatures and still be considered a horror?

Exactly. I think where the lines blur is with secondary-world fantasy that includes large amounts of horrific content (and I don't mean the quality of writing!). For that matter, there are works like Matheson's that straddle the horror/SF fence as well.

Still, I think most of the choices here stand a good chance of being deemed horror fiction, at least.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I'm more than a little amazed and dismayed to hear that Bierce isn't more widely available in your neck of the woods though!

Well, neither are Blackwood or Machen. I'm just very persistent at sifting through second-hand bookstores.

 

[GOLLUM]

Well, neither are Blackwood or Machen. I'm just very persistent at sifting through second-hand bookstores.

All power to you then I say.

I spend a lot of time trawling the second hand bookshops, much of the fun being that you never quite know what Gem you're going to find next at an affordable price. My recent and somewhat rare discovery of a HB edn. of Slyvia Townsend Warner's Kingdoms Of Eflin in near perfect working order being a good example.

 

[Nesacat]

I suppose you would have to collect Lovecraft's best tales in two volumes perhaps?

"Fevre Dream" is already in the Fantasy masterworks series, I would exclude titles already in one of the other series just to avoid overlap.

And what about "I have always lived in the castle" by Shirley Jackson?

I'm suprised you haven't suggested any Barker or is he too recent do you think?

Oh, and surely a collection by Algernon Blackwood should feature, especially as he didn't get into the Fantasy Masterworks series...

Two illustrated volumes of Lovecraft would be amazing bit I'd settle for even one.

Absolutely agree about I Have Always Lived In A Castle and I'd like to add The Lottery too only that's a short story.

Barker should be in yes (I was doing this in the Arctic just before I went home so missed lots and scolded myself all the way home). I don't know which I would pick though ... I like Hellbound Heart best for some reason.

Algernon Blackwood yes and MR James too. Turn of the Screw is frightening. And there's the short story Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman.

Maybe there should be a Masterwork of assorted shorts?