Supernatural Horror in Literature

"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

↑ Joshi, S. T. Joshi & Schultz, David E. "Supernatural Horror in Literature". An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia: 255.
↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 255.
↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 256.
↑ 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

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Supernatural Horror in Literature

"Supernatural Horror in Literature"—eText at the H. P. Lovecraft Archive
"A Map on Chalkboards" – An imagemap following the chapters of the essay (containing it's entire text)

H. P. Lovecraft

Works	List of works Dream Cycle

Locations	Arkham Dunwich Innsmouth Kingsport Miskatonic University Miskatonic River Lovecraft Country R'lyeh The Nameless City Yuggoth

Characters	Abdul Alhazred Robert Harrison Blake Randolph Carter Kuranes Herbert West

Cthulhu Mythos deities	Azathoth Cthulhu Ghatanothoa Hypnos Nodens Nyarlathotep Shub-Niggurath Tsathoggua Yog-Sothoth

Cthulhu Mythos species	Colour out of space Deep Ones Dholes Elder Things Flying polyps Great Race of Yith Hunting Horrors Men of Leng Mi-go Moon-beasts Nightgaunts Serpent Men Shantaks Shoggoth

Books about Lovecraft	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft

Legacy and influence	Cthulhu Mythos Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture Lovecraftian horror Cosmicism Weird fiction

Related	Extraterrestrial places in the Cthulhu Mythos Books in the Cthulhu Mythos Cthulhu Mythos cults Necronomicon Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Kalem Club

Family	Sonia Greene (wife) Whipple Van Buren Phillips (grandfather)

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

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Supernatural Horror in Literature

See also

Footnotes

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