Supernatural Horror in Literature
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" | |
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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
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.
- 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