The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M R James, Ambrose Bierce, H P Lovecraft

The leading critic of supernatural literature here examines the roots of the "weird tale" (as Lovecraft called it) through detailed examinations of five "founding fathers" of the genre: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, and H.P. Lovecraft. The result is a thorough study of the art, craft, philosophy, and aesthetics of an enduring genre of fantastic literature.

Literature & Fiction

JOSHI, S.T.

United States

Univ of Texas Pr

History & Criticism

The Irish writer Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) has suffered a regrettable decline in critical esteem. Although one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers of the early 20th century, he seems to have fallen out of fashion with both the Irish critical community and with enthusiasts of fantasy literature. But Dunsany was one of the critical figures in modern fantasy, a significant influence on Tolkien, Le Guin, and other writers. His own work, written over a 50-year span and covering nearly every literary mode (short story, novel, play, essay, poem), is itself rich with meaning. In this, the first academic study of Dunsany's work, Joshi establishes that Dunsany has a remarkable grasp of the symbolic function of fantasy, and that he used fantasy, horror, and the supernatural as metaphors for his most deeply held convictions on life and society. His entire work is unified by a single overriding theme―the need for human reunification with the natural world―even though this theme takes on many different forms (e.g., scorn of industrialization, demonstration of the moral superiority of animals over human beings, rumination on the extinction of the human race). The course of Dunsany's long career―proceeding from early short stories and plays about the edge of the world to full-length novels to tales of comic fantasy (such as the popular Jorkens stories) to sensitive works about Ireland―reveals a writer constantly searching for new ways to express his central philosophic and aesthetic conceptions. Joshi's volume may best be described as an exercise in literary excavation―an attempt to unearth an unjustly forgotten writer and to show that his work is in need of further study and analysis.

Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)

British & Irish

Praeger

Ambrose Bierce is well known to readers as the author of The Devil's Dictionary (1906) and numerous short stories, such as the Civil War tales gathered in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) and the horror stories collected in Can Such Things Be? (1893). But, in his own day, he was best known as a prolific and fearless jounalist, and in the 40 years of his literary career he wrote thousands of articles for newspapers and magazines in San Francisco, London, and elsewhere. Most of the articles and poems that Bierce published in his own 12-volume Collected Works (1909-12) first appeared in his newspaper columns, as did his celebrated tales. With the growing scholarly interest in Bierce, these contributions are eliciting more attention.
This bibliography is the first to attempt an exhaustive catalog of Bierce's entire body of published work. While the volume includes a chapter of separate publications by Bierce, such as individual books, its most important feature is a chapter listing entries for his contributions to books and periodicals. These entries identify the first appearances of his stories, articles, and poems. An additional chapter lists reprints of his works, and the volume also provides information about manuscript holdings. Joshi and Schultz demonstrate that in addition to being a master short story writer, fabulist, and epigrammatist, Bierce may also have been the leading American journalist of the 19th century.

Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources (Bibliographies and Indexes in American Literature)

SCHULTZ, DAVID E.

Greenwood

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is commonly regarded as the leading author of supernatural fiction in the 20th century. He is distinctive among writers in having a tremendous popular following as well as a considerable and increasing academic reputation as a writer of substance and significance. This encyclopedia is an exhaustive guide to many aspects of Lovecraft's life and work, codifying the detailed research on Lovecraft conducted by many scholars over the past three decades. It includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries on Lovecraft and presents extensive bibliographical information.
The volume draws upon rare documents, including thousands of unpublished letters, in presenting plot synopses of Lovecraft's major works, descriptions of characters in his tales, capsule biographies of his major colleagues and family members, and entries on little known features in his stories, such as his imaginary book of occult lore, the Necronomicon. The volume refers to current scholarship on the issues in question and also supplies the literary, topographical, and biographical sources for key elements in Lovecraft's work. As Lovecraft's renown continues to ascend in the 21st century, this encyclopedia will be essential to an understanding of his life and writings.

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Biographies & Memoirs

Horror and the supernatural have fascinated people for centuries, and many of the most central figures appear over and over again. These figures have gained iconic status and continue to hold sway over popular culture and the modern imagination. This book offers extended entries on 24 of the most enduring and significant figures of horror and the supernatural, including The Sea Creature, The Witch, The Alien, The Vampire, The Werewolf, The Sorcerer, The Ghost, The Siren, The Mummy, The Devil, and The Zombie. Each entry is written by a leading authority on the subject and discusses the topic's essential features and lasting influence, from the classical epics of Homer to the novels of Stephen King. Entries cite sources for further reading, and the Encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. Entries include illustrations, sidebars of interesting information, and excerpts from key texts.
Horror and the supernatural have fascinated people for centuries, with many of the most central figures appearing over and over again across time and cultures. These figures have starred in the world's most widely read literary works, most popular films, and most captivating television series. Because of their popularity and influence, they have attained iconic status and a special place in the popular imagination. This book overviews 24 of the most significant icons of horror and the supernatural.
 • Overviews a wide range of supernatural lore
• Entries include sidebars and cite works for further reading
• Includes a bibliography of important works on horror and the supernatural
• Illustrations help students visualize the topics of the entries

Icons of Horror and the Supernatural [2 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares [2 volumes] (Greenwood Icons)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

The unique anthology gathers nineteen works of fiction by a renowned group of writers who lived and worked in the Civil War era. These contemporary voices from the North and the South, male and female, in the war or observed first-hand, give this collection a rare sense of authenticity. Including authors Mark Twain, Henry James, Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Bret Harte, and more, each story reflects the writer's personal experience of the time, and will captivate readers--fans of literature and Civil War buffs alike--with riveting tales of battle, bravery, love, and tragedy.

Civil War Memories: Nineteen Stories of Glory and Tragedy

Gramercy

Human beings comprise earth's only death cult.\nUnique in our intellectual capabilities, we regard our dead with love, fear, sorrow, and awe. From the earthly corpse to the cosmic soul, we seek to speak with the dead, engage with them, and keep some essential part of them with us.\nMost of all, we hope not for their finite decay, but for its opposite: that those we love will live on after death, and that we will, too.\nSince the beginning of recorded history, artists, spiritualists, philosophers, and seekers of all kinds have taken the leap into the great mysteries of existence and the even greater possibilities of immortality. Fortunately for us, most of them lived to tell a tale or two.\nIn Firbolg Publishing's second grimoire collection, we bring together an eclectic mix of fiction, poetry, essays and reflections, artwork, historical documents, and odd ephemera to explore centuries' worth of attitudes, expressions, and eccentricities regarding life, death, the afterlife, and the extraordinary spaces in between.\nFeaturing artists both past and present, we take readers on a deep dive into the uniquely human way of exploring, experiencing, and expressing both the many blessings and profound tragedies of life, death, and what remains.\nFully illustrated in color/black and white artwork and photography from both modern and historical artists and sources.

What Remains

Bailey, Michael

Scully, B.E.

Genre Fiction

Firbolg Publishing

During the short period from the early 80s through the 90s, a small group of dedicated fans and scholars worked diligently to bring more understanding to the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft. These people were known, informally, as ‘The Providence Pals’. Working in a time when Lovecraft was still widely unknown and little noticed by literary circles, this group pioneered new research and blazed a path for the eventual acknowledgement of Lovecraft as a major literary writer and thinker of the 20th century. ‘The Providence Pals’ included many who would go on to become leading figures in the scholarship of Lovecraft’s life and work. They were S. T. Joshi, Marc Michaud, Jason Eckhardt, Donald R. Burleson, Peter Cannon, Steven J. Mariconda, Robert M. Price, Will Murray, Mollie Burleson, Robert H. Knox, Ken Neily and Sam Gafford. For a brief, shining moment, these people came together in friendship and a common desire to advance Lovecraft’s cause. In this book, learn what the group meant to these individuals and sample some of their writings. This volume is a celebration of those times and these people for we are all, in a sense, ‘Providence Pals’.

Providence Pals: Memories and Miscellany

Price, Robert M.

Cannon, Peter

Murray, Will

Gafford, Sam

Mariconda, Steven J.

Michaud, Marc

Burleson, Don

Eckhardt, Jason

Burleson, Mollie

Literary

Ulthar Press

This is a critical study of many of the leading writers of horror and supernatural fiction since World War II. The primary purpose is to establish a canon of weird literature, and to distinguish the genuinely meritorious writers of the past fifty years from those who have obtained merely transient popular renown. Accordingly, the author regards the complex, subtle work of Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Aickman, T.E.D. Klein, and Thomas Ligotti as considerably superior to the best-sellers of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, and Anne Rice. Other writers such as William Peter Blatty, Thomas Tryon, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Harris are also discussed. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a pioneering attempt to chart the development of weird fiction over the past half-century.

The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction

McFarland Company

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