Weird fiction has a long history, but I find a lot of my younger friends aren’t aware of it. That holds true for a lot of things, and is probably more about my aging than any failing of my friends. I remember a good pal who was so blown away when he found out about the original Doom Patrol, misfit heroes led by a professor in a wheelchair, which debuted several months before the X-Men.

Well, you can’t be an expert on everything, but I’m a firm believer in the idea that you can’t know where you’re going without knowing something of where you’ve come from. To that end, I refer those interested to these five short books that comprise a crash course in the history of the genre. All but one (or two, depending on how you count) are readily available in inexpensive paperbacks.

Supernatural Horror in Literature by H. P. Lovecraft

Simply put,  the Old Gentleman’s classic survey is a must-read. That’s not bias or affection speaking (though I have plenty of both), it’s simply the most detailed and concise survey of weird fiction ever written. It’s a small book, but dense as a neutron star in terms of its scope, which begins in classical mythology and ends in his own era. He gives short shrift to Victorian ghost stories –no surprise as his own fiction was partly a reaction to the clichés of the stock ghost story– but he covers so many other writers, famous and obscure, that the omission isn’t noticeable until someone points it out.

All the classics of Gothic fiction are touched upon (The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, Vathek, Northanger Abbey, and so on), followed in turn by European authors like Erckmann-Chartrain, DeMaupassant, Doyle and Hodgson, the American classics of Poe, Hawthorne and Stevenson, with special emphasis on Blackwood and Machen. Shiel, Buchan and Clark Ashton Smith get their time in the moonlight, as do De LaMare, Bierce, and James.

The most frustrating aspect of the work is the number of works by lesser-known authors whose books are not easily found. Lovecraft summarizes these stories in such a way that you almost feel compelled to pay collector’s prices for first editions just to read them. The good folks at Hippocampus Press (see the left sidebar) have started a series called Lovecraft’s Library, publishing some of these more obscure works.

The Literature of Terror, vols. 1 & 2, by David Punter

The subtitles of the two volumes are, respectively, ‘The Gothic Traditon’ and ‘The Modern Gothic.’ A little drier, and much more Freudian than HPL’s work, Punter’s two-volume set examines fewer works in greater detail. His definition of Gothic is quite expansive, so you’ll find some surprise entries along the way (but  Lovecraft won’t be among them; the definition is not that expansive.) The first volume covers the origins of the Gothic tradition in the mid-18th century, examines the Gothic classics in relation to one another and to their authors, and culminates with Edwardian stalwarts like Wilkie Collins and LeFanu; volume 2 picks up with Oscar Wilde and proceeds to the ‘present day’ of the 1980s.

Unfortunately, both of these books are out of print, and priced dearly on Amazon. You might find better deals at ABE or eBay. Most of the Gothic novels, however, are available for free from Project Gutenberg.

The Weird Tale by S. T. Joshi

Tightening the focus even more, Joshi takes a long hard look at six authors: Machen, Dunsany, Blackwood, James, Bierece and you-know-who, though he ropes in other authors for comparison along the way. It’s a scholarly approach, and thus a bit more opinionated (in my opinion) but Joshi knows his stuff and writes clearly (though I wish he would give the word piquant a rest for the next, say, twenty years or so.)

The Evolution of the Weird Tale by S. T. Joshi

A companion volume, more or less, to the above, examining influential but lesser known authors, avoiding the Gothic ground already trod by others and starting in the late 19th century. There’s a piece on HPL, of course, but you don’t often find detailed examinations on W.C. Morrow, Edward Lucas White, and the horror tales of Rudyard Kipling.

The book is most informative, however, as Joshi picks up where Lovecraft left off, tracing Lovecraft’s influence on Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber and others from the late 1930’s to modern talents as diverse as Rod Serling and Poppy Z. Brite. Mind you, Joshi doesn’t necessarly like all these authors, he just feels they have a place along the line of evolution he proposes

The Modern Weird Tale by S.T. Joshi

What can I say? The man is prolific, and one of the few people who take horror seriously. (This actually came out before Evolution of the Weird Tale, but makes more sense listed here)

Following the same format as the other books, Joshi looks at more recent writers of weird fiction, with the difference that he makes a clear distinction between what he believes is ‘better’ and ‘lesser’. T.E.D. Klein,Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti all make the first list for their complex -I would lean more toward oblique- stories, while the latter list is reserved more for those authors who sell the most boooks, like King, Rice, and Barker. William Peter Blatty also makes the second list, and is the only one that I think truly belongs there. The Exorcist is a hugely influential book and it scared the bejabbers out of me when I read it in college; when I tried to re-read it a few years back, I was appalled at what a pulpy, hack novel it really was.

At any rate, it’s one of the few books addressed toward the contemporary state of the unholy union.

Joshi even has a fourth book that belongs on this list, Supernatural Fiction of the World, edited along with  Stefan Dziemianowicz, issued in three volumes by Greenwood Press in 2005. Priced t $315, I have to admit I haven’t picked up a copy as yet, even at the used price of $249.95. I’m absolutely sure it’s worth it; Joshi is a scholar’s scholar. But I’ll have to make do with the Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by Jack Sullican, and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, edited by John clute & John Grant.

Danse Macabre by Stephen King

Essentially, this is King’s version of Supernatural Horror in Literature, though that is not meant as a dig. King spends less time on the origins and more on the present, elaborating on the classic themes of horror fiction. He touches on the occasional movie, but his insight into fiction, in that great conversational style he has, is the strength of the book.

A detriment is that he doesn’t deal with his own work; you’ll have to elsewhere to find critical studies of King’s ouevre.

A compensating bonus, however, is a long list of suggested reading, compiled with a very catholic view of what constitutes horror. If you don’t like the book, you can still tear out these pages and pin them up for reference next time you are wondering what to read next.

Ok, get to it. Expect pop quizzes, and an essay test down the road.

//Tags: Arkham, Cthulhu, Gothic fiction, Gothic novels, H.P. Lovecraft, horror, Larry Latham, Lovecraft comic, Lovecraft comics, Lovecraft is Missing, Necronomicon, occult, pulp, s.t. joshi.stephen king, supernatural

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