American supernatural tales Read online

  —S. T. Joshi

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  The supernatural in literature has, in a bibliographical sense, been exhaustively charted and tabulated; but in terms of analysis and criticism, it remains in a somewhat primitive state.

  Bibliographies. Donald H. Tuck’s Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968 (Advent, 1974-83; 3 vols.) remains valuable, although much outdated and sprinkled with errors. E. F. Bleiler’s Guide to Supernatural Fiction (Kent State University Press, 1983) is invaluable in supplying plot synopses of thousands of supernatural novels and tales, but both his criteria for inclusion and his critical judgments are subject to debate. The pinnacle of such bibliographical work is Mike Ashley and William G. Contento’s The Supernatural Index (Greenwood Press, 1995), an immense index of anthologies of supernatural fiction. Ashley is now at work on a similar compilation for single-author collections. Ashley assisted Frank H. Parnell in the invaluable Monthly Terrors (Greenwood Press, 1985), an index to hundreds of magazines in the field, including Weird Tales. Hal W. Hall has done outstanding work in charting criticism of supernatural fiction in such works as Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index, 1878-1985 (Gale Research Co., 1987; 2 vols.) and its supplements.

  Encyclopedias. The most recent and comprehensive encyclopedia is Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia, edited by S. T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemianowicz (Greenwood Press, 2005; 3 vols.), which includes entries on more than one thousand authors, works, and topics in the field. Icons of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by S. T. Joshi (Greenwood Press, 2006), features substantial essays on twenty-four leading “icons” (the ghost, the haunted house, etc.) of supernatural fiction. Also of value are Horror Literature, edited by Marshall Tymn (Bowker, 1981); Horror Literature, edited by Neil Barron (Garland, 1990), revised as Fantasy and Horror (Scarecrow Press, 1999); and David Pringle’s Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers (St. James Press, 1998). Still of value for its wide coverage (especially of weird films and music) and its entertainingly idiosyncratic articles by leading writers in the field is The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by Jack Sullivan (Viking Penguin, 1986). Frank N. Magill’s Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature (Salem Press, 1983; 5 vols.) features essays on many works of supernatural fiction by various hands. E. F. Bleiler’s Supernatural Fiction Writers (Scribner, 1985; 2 vols.) presents a discussion by various contributors of more than 150 writers, although several of them are only of tangential relevance to supernatural literature; more recent writers are covered in Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror, edited by Richard Bleiler (Scribner, 2002; 2 vols.). Also pertinent is Gothic Writers, edited by Douglass H. Thomson, Jack G. Voller, and Frederick S. Frank (Greenwood Press, 2002).

  History and Criticism. There is even now no sound historical discussion of supernatural literature. In many ways the best remains Les Daniels’s Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (Scribner, 1975), although of course it is now much out of date. Still of value is H. P. Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” first published in 1927. See The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, edited by S. T. Joshi (Hippocampus Press, 2000). Stimulating both as a theoretical analysis and an historical study is Peter Penzoldt’s The Supernatural in Fiction (Peter Nevill, 1952). David Punter’s The Literature of Terror (Longman, 1980) is a ploddingly chronological treatment; the revised edition (Longman, 1996; 2 vols.) omits discussion of many important contemporary writers. Some studies of selected historical periods—such as Julia Briggs’s Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (Faber & Faber, 1977) and Jack Sullivan’s Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood (Ohio University Press, 1978)—are somewhat better. The early Gothic novels, in spite of their admitted literary inferiority to late work, continue to receive disproportionate coverage; but as they are almost exclusively focused on British writers, they need not be cited here.

  More theoretical works are Rosemary Jackson’s provocative Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (Methuen, 1981); S. T. Joshi’s philosophical study, The Weird Tale (University of Texas Press, 1990), supplemented by The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001) and The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press, 2004); and Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror (Routledge, 1990). Two interesting collections of essays are The Haunted Dusk: American Supernatural Fiction, 1820-1920, edited by Howard Kerr, John W. Crowley, and Charles L. Crow (University of Georgia Press, 1983), and American Supernatural Fiction: From Edith Wharton to the Weird Tales Writers, edited by Douglas Robillard (Garland, 1996).

  Studies of the individual authors covered in this volume include:

  CHARLES BEAUMONT

  Stefan Dziemianowicz, “‘Dark Music’: The Macabre Fiction of Charles Beaumont,” Studies in Weird Fiction no. 13 (Summer 1993): 28-35

  William F. Nolan, ed., The Work of Charles Beaumont: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (Borgo Press, 2nd ed., 1990)

  Lee Prosser, Running from the Hunter: The Life and Work of Charles Beaumont (Borgo Press, 1976)

  AMBROSE BIERCE

  Lawrence I. Berkove, A Prescription for Adversity: The Moral Art of Ambrose Bierce (Ohio State University Press, 2003)

  Cathy N. Davidson, ed., Critical Essays on Ambrose Bierce (G. K. Hall, 1982)

  M. E. Grenander, Ambrose Bierce (Twayne, 1971)

  Roy Morris, Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company (Crown, 1995)

  ROBERT BLOCH

  Robert Bloch, Once Around the Bloch (Tor, 1993)

  Randall Larson, The Complete Robert Bloch: An Illustrated, Comprehensive Bibliography (Fandon Unlimited, 1986)

  Richard Matheson and Ricia Mainhardt, ed., Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master (Tor, 1995)

  RAY BRADBURY

  John R. Eller, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (Kent State University Press, 2004)

  David Mogen, Ray Bradbury (Twayne, 1986)

  William F. Nolan, The Ray Bradbury Companion (Gale Research Co., 1975)

  Joseph D. Olander and Martin H. Greenberg, ed., Ray Bradbury (Taplinger, 1980)

  Jerry Weist, Bradbury: An Illustrated Life (Morrow, 2002)

  ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

  Frederic Taber Cooper, Some American Story Tellers (Henry Holt, 1911)

  En compagnie du Roi en jaune (Paris: L’Association de l’Oeil du Sphinx, 1999)

  S. T. Joshi, “Robert W. Chambers: The Bohemian Weird Tale,” in Joshi’s The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press, 2004)

  AUGUST DERLETH

  James P. Roberts, ed., Return to Derleth: Selected Essays (White Hawk Press, 1993; 2 vols.)

  Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky, Derleth Hawk and Dove (National Writers Press, 1997)

  Alison M. Wilson, August Derleth: A Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1983)

  William Dutch and others, August W. Derleth: A Bibliographical Checklist of His Works (August Derleth Society, 1996)

  DENNIS ETCHISON

  S. T. Joshi, “Dennis Etchison: Spanning the Genres,” in Joshi’s The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press, 2004)

  David Mathew, “Arterial Motives: Dennis Etchison Interviewed,” Interzone No. 133 (July 1998): 23-26

  Darrell Schwietzer, “The Dark Side of the American Dream: Dennis Etchison,” in Discovering Modern Horror Fiction I, ed. Darrell Schweitzer (Starmont House, 1985)

  Douglas E. Winter, “Dennis Etchison,” in Winter’s Faces of Fear (Berkley, 1985)

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

  Harry Levin, The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe and Melville (Knopf, 1958)

  Edwin Haviland Miller, Salem Is My Resting Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne (University of Iowa Press, 1991)

  William Bysshe Stein, Hawthorne’s Faust: A Study of the Devil Archetype (University Press of Florida, 1953)

  Hyatt Waggoner, Hawthorne: A Critical Study (Harvard University Press, 1955; rev. 1963)

  ROBERT E. HOWARD

  Marc Cerasini and Charles
Hoffman, Robert E. Howard (Starmont House, 1987)

  L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook de Camp, and Jane Whittington Griffin, Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard (Bluejay, 1983)

  Don Herron, ed., The Barbaric Triumph: A Critical Anthology on the Writings of Robert E. Howard (Wildside Press, 2004)

  Don Herron, ed., The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard (Greenwood Press, 1984)

  WASHINGTON IRVING

  John Clendenning, “Irving and the Gothic Tradition,” Bucknell Review 12 (1964): 90-98

  Donald A. Ringe, American Gothic: Imagination and Reason in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (University Press of Kentucky, 1982)

  Edward Wagenknecht, Washington Irving: Moderation Displayed (Oxford University Press, 1962)

  Stanley T. Williams, The Life of Washington Irving (Oxford University Press, 1935; 2 vols.)

  SHIRLEY JACKSON

  Joan Wylie Hall, Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne, 1993)

  Darryl Hattenhauer, Shirley Jackson’s American Gothic (State University of New York Press, 2003)

  S. T. Joshi, “Shirley Jackson: Domestic Horror,” in Joshi’s The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001)

  Judy Oppenheimer, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson (Putnam, 1988)

  HENRY JAMES

  Martha Banta, Henry James and the Occult (Indiana University Press, 1972)

  Wayne C. Booth, “Indifference to the Writer’s Task: Telling a Ghost Story,” in Critical Understanding (University of Chicago Press, 1979)

  Leon Edel, Henry James (Lippincott, 1953-72; 5 vols.)

  Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne, 1990)

  T. J. Lustig, Henry James and the Ghostly (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

  CAITLIN R. KIERNAN

  Ramsey Campbell, “Afterword: A Certain Inexplicability,” in Kiernan’s To Charles Fort, with Love (Subterranean Press, 2005)

  Caitlin R. Kiernan, Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold (Subterranean Press, 2003)

  Gahan Wilson, Review of To Charles Fort, with Love, Realms of Fantasy (February 2006)

  STEPHEN KING

  Tony Magistrale, ed., The Dark Descent: Essays Defining Stephen King’s Horrorscape (Greenwood Press, 1992)

  Sharon A. Russell, Revisiting Stephen King (Greenwood Press, 2002)

  Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller, ed., Fear Itself: The Early Works of Stephen King (Underwood-Miller, 1982)

  Douglas E. Winter, Stephen King: The Art of Darkness (New American Library, 1984)

  T. E. D. KLEIN

  Dagon nos. 18/19 (July-October 1987) (special issue on Klein)

  S. T. Joshi, “T. E. D. Klein: Urban Horror,” in Joshi’s The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001)

  Steven J. Mariconda, “The Hints and Portents of T. E. D. Klein,” Studies in Weird Fiction no. 1 (Summer 1986): 19-28

  Robert M. Price, “T. E. D. Klein,” in Discovering Modern Horror Fiction I, ed. Darrell Schweitzer (Starmont House, 1985)

  FRITZ LEIBER

  Bruce Byfield, Witches of the Mind: A Critical Study of Fritz Leiber (Necronomicon Press, 1991)

  Fantasy Commentator nos. 57/58 (2004) (special issue on Leiber)

  Jeff Frane, Fritz Leiber (Starmont House, 1980)

  Tom Staicar, Fritz Leiber (Frederick Ungar, 1983)

  THOMAS LIGOTTI

  Dagon nos. 22/23 (September-December 1988) (special issue on Ligotti)

  S. T. Joshi, “Thomas Ligotti: The Escape from Life,” in Joshi’s The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001)

  Mark Samuels, “Everything Ends in a Greater Blackness: Some Remarks on the Fiction of Thomas Ligotti,” Wormwood No. 1 (2003): 62-68

  Darrell Schweitzer, ed., The Thomas Ligotti Reader (Wildside Press, 2003)

  H. P. LOVECRAFT

  Donald R. Burleson, H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study (Greenwood Press, 1983)

  Peter Cannon, ed., Lovecraft Remembered (Arkham House, 1998)

  S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996)

  S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Starmont House, 1990)

  David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, ed., An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991)

  RICHARD MATHESON

  Stefan Dziemianowicz, “Horror Begins at Home: Richard Matheson’s Fear of the Familiar,” Studies in Weird Fiction no. 14 (Winter 1991): 29-26

  Mark Rathbun and Graeme Flanagan, Richard Matheson—He Is Legend: An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography (Rathbun, 1984)

  David Oakes, Science and Destabilization in the Modern American Gothic: Lovecraft, Matheson and King (Greenwood Press, 2000)

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  Joanne V. Creighton, Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years (Twayne, 1992)

  Brenda Daly, Lavish Self-Divisions: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates (University Press of Mississippi, 1996)

  Greg Johnson, Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates (Dutton, 1998)

  Greg Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne, 1994)

  Marilyn C. Wesley, Refusal and Transgression in Joyce Carol Oates’ Fiction (Greenwood Press, 1993)

  FITZ-JAMES O’BRIEN

  Sam Moskowitz, “The Fabulous Fantasist—Fitz-James O’Brien,” in Moskowitz’s Explorers of the Infinite (World Publishing Co., 1963)

  Francis Wolle, Fitz-James O’Brien: A Literary Bohemian of the Eighteen-Fifties (University of Colorado Press, 1944)

  NORMAN PARTRIDGE

  S. T. Joshi, Review of The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists, Weird Tales no. 325 (Winter 2001-02): 16-17

  Simon MacCulloch, Review of The Bars on Satan’s Jailhouse, Necrofile no. 18 (Fall 1995): 7-10

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  Michael L. Burduck, Grim Phantasms: Fear in Poe’s Short Fiction (Garland, 1992)

  Edward H. Davidson, Poe: A Critical Study (Harvard University Press, 1957)

  David Ketterer, The Rationale of Deception in Poe (Louisiana State University Press, 1979)

  Kenneth Silverman, Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance (HarperCollins, 1991)

  G. R. Thompson, Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales (University of Wisconsin Press, 1973)

  DAVID J. SCHOW

  S. T. Joshi, “David J. Schow and Splatterpunk,” in Joshi’s The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press, 2004)

  Richard Michael, “Night Bloomer: The Defiant Fiction of David J. Schow,” in Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual 1991, ed. Robert A. Collins and Rob Latham (Greenwood Press, 1994)

  CLARK ASHTON SMITH

  Steve Behrends, Clark Ashton Smith (Starmont House, 1990)

  Scott Connors, ed., The Freedom of Fantastic Things (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

  Donald Sidney-Fryer, Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography (Donald M. Grant, 1978)

  Donald Sidney-Fryer, The Last of the Great Romantic Poets (Silver Scarab Press, 1973)

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  David Drake, “A Brief Introduction to Karl Wagner,” Weird Tales no. 294 (Fall 1989): 110-12

  Jo Fletcher, “Darkness Weaves with Many Shades by Karl Edward Wagner,” in Horror: Another 100 Best Books, ed. Stephen Jones and Kim Newman (Carroll & Graf, 2006)

  Darrell Schweitzer, “Karl Edward Wagner and the Haunted Hills (and Kudzu),” in Discovering Modern Horror Fiction: 1, ed. Darrell Schweitzer (Starmont House, 1985)

  I am grateful to Stefan Dziemianowicz and Steven J. Mariconda for valuable suggestions regarding the selection of items in this volume. My thanks also to Rusty Burke, Scott Connors, Dennis Etchison, John Haefele, Caitlin R. Kiernan, T. E. D. Klein, and Norman Partridge for supplying texts and other information.

  WASHINGTON IRVING

  Washington Irving was born in New York City in 1783. Generally regarded as the first significant writer in the United States, Irving practiced law until 1803. After a two-year visit to Europe
(1804-06) to improve his health, Irving began writing articles and sketches in magazines; his first book, A History of New York (1809), published under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, brought him immediate fame. Shortly thereafter, Irving moved to England, where he remained for nearly twenty years. It was there that The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1820), including such celebrated tales as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” was published. Tales of a Traveller followed in 1824. Financial considerations led him to accept a position at the United States embassy in Madrid, where he wrote several works reflecting his interest in Spain, notably The Legends of the Alhambra (1832). Irving was minister to Spain in 1842-46. During his later years Irving worked on Astoria (1836), a history of the Astor family, and biographies of Oliver Goldsmith (1849) and George Washington (1855-59; 5 vols.). Irving died at Sunnyside, New York, in 1859.

  Irving is distinctive in combining humor and satire with the supernatural. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” with its well-known image of the headless horseman, has been adapted for film or television at least seven times. Many of Irving’s best-known horror tales are included in Tales of a Traveller, among which are “The Adventure of My Uncle” and “The Adventure of My Aunt,” about animated portraits; “The Devil and Tom Walker,” a popular account of a bargain with the devil; and “The Bold Dragoon,” which features both a ghost and animated furniture. “The Storm-Ship,” a segment of the tale “Dolph Heyliger,” in Bracebridge Hall (1822), is an engaging tale of the Flying Dutchman.