Gothic Horror

Booknews

Presents classic and contemporary accounts of the modern gothic horror writing of authors including Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Clive Barker, as well as essays by current literary scholars, and extracts from representative works. An introduction outlines the development of the genre and its social context. Includes a chronology. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Distributed by St. Martin's Press. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

horroronline

A compilation of literary commentary, Gothic Horror: A Reader's Guide from Poe to King and Beyond provides an abundance of excellent essays and extracts from a variety of sources -- Edgar Allan Poe (on how he wrote The Raven), Lafcadio Hearn, a symposium on Lovecraft that included Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber, a Playboy interview with Stephen King, for example -- but with an emphasis on contemporary scholarly accounts. British academic Clive Bloom's editorial selections are comprehensive and Gothic Horror provides plenty of theory and insight for serious aficionados of dark fiction. Bloom on his own, however, is somewhat disappointing. The information he provides with his chronology of significant horror and ghost tales from 1840 to 1996 is useful, but only up to about 1980. His introduction is mired in murky writing and minor inaccuracies -- he credits Stephen King with inventing the term "splatterpunk" -- leading one to wish the professor had had a bit more editorial guidance. But his knack for finding and choosing the best bits from others mavens of the macabre more than makes up for the introductory inadequacies.
— horroronline