Most notable horror story writer?

I collected a few names, although not all of these were primarily horror writers, but all have produced horror stories at some time :)
It pains me to say that the vast majority is english-speaking. Not sure why this is the case, but it appears that at least horror literature in english is by far more wide-spread, or at least it is the one which i have mostly come to contact with.

Anyway, here are the nominations:

E.A.Poe

H.P.Lovecraft

Guy De Maupassant

Arthur Machen

H.G.Wells

Henry James

R.L.Stevenson

Or you can name others :)

Bram Stoker
MR James
WW Jacobs
Mary Shelley
Ray Bradbury
Franz Kafka

Since many of those you refer to in your poll are best known for their short stories, I'd have to say you missed one - Ramsey Campbell, whose short stories are just about the best in that genre.

better than Edgar Allan Poe? You have to be kidding.

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

better than Edgar Allan Poe? You have to be kidding.

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On what grounds are you challenging his statement exactly?

You're openly admitting you've never heard of Ramsey Campbell, which would therefore imply you haven't read any of the man's work to judge one way or the other.

And you can't be that knowledgeable about the horror genre since you haven't ever heard of Ramsey Campbell since he is in fact a big name in the horror genre today. You know, you could always read his wikipedia page.

I voted for H.G. Wells in the poll, simply because he is a brilliant author. In fact, he is my favorite science fiction writer! I have no idea why you categorize him as a horror author...it seems pretty degrading to such a brilliant man. ;)

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Originally Posted by Aragorn Elessar

I voted for H.G. Wells in the poll, simply because he is a brilliant author. In fact, he is my favorite science fiction writer! I have no idea why you categorize him as a horror author...it seems pretty degrading to such a brilliant man. ;)

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Genre fiction writers have always mixed genres though. The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Invisible Man stand out as H.G. Wells novels with distinctive elements of horror stories. Likewise, there are elements of science fiction clearly present in Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Do I even have to say it? I think everyone knows my vote, and if in doubt, just check out my sig :D

H.P. Lovecraft gets my vote, although I also have an affection for Arthur Machen.

Lovecraft took horror away from the 19th century tropes and opened it up to cosmic, almost infinite possibilities. His imagination operated on a scale that Poe and Maupassant, with their little ghosts and vampires, couldn't even comprehend. He created mythologies and a parallel, secret history of Mankind and the world. That's a remarkable feat of the imagination.

Poe followed trends from Europe, mainly Germany and the English Gothic. Lovecraft created his own tradition.

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Originally Posted by Heteronym

H.P. Lovecraft gets my vote, although I also have an affection for Arthur Machen.

Lovecraft took horror away from the 19th century tropes and opened it up to cosmic, almost infinite possibilities. His imagination operated on a scale that Poe and Maupassant, with their little ghosts and vampires, couldn't even comprehend. He created mythologies and a parallel, secret history of Mankind and the world. That's a remarkable feat of the imagination.

Poe followed trends from Europe, mainly Germany and the English Gothic. Lovecraft created his own tradition.

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Ghosts and Vampires in De Maupassant? I think you haven't read him at all :)

In fact he mentions several times that he does not believe in ghosts. All his horrors are apparitions, psychological manifestations of some great fear in his protagonists's life, which takes a form as if it had an actual body.
To me he is certaintly miles ahead of Lovecraft, who was always an imitator of Poe and Dunsany, with little achievement of his own in regards to style. That said i enjoy a number of Lovecraft's works, but he was nowhere near as important for literature as De Maupassant and Poe.
Who did Poe influence? Among others genre-defining authors like Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle, De Maupassant, Baudelaire, to name just a few great names.
De Maupassant is the most celebrated french writer of short stories, and one of the main european ones as well. Machen, who you said you like, precicely refers to De Maupassant's ideas in several of his stories, such as in The White People :)

And Lovecraft, well, he influenced Stephen King ( :lol: ) Ok, that was a bit malignant, but you see what i mean :)

Ps I hope this didnt sound too much like a polemic ;) In reality i appreciate Lovecraft's work, with all its disadvantages, which Lovecraft himself was very much aware of. And some of his stories i find indeed poetic (such as the music of Erich Zahn). But he seems to have been the less encephalic writer, the less conscious of symbolism (although he was in part trying to use it to cause horror, as is shown in his letters).
Also let's not forget that Lovecraft was a recluse, virtually a loner until his early thirties. He had far less experience of life than Poe or De Maupassant, and that shows in his writing as well, which is more monotone than the ones of those two.

Poe, closely followed by Lovecraft.

Is Stephen King not qualified? ;)

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

better than Edgar Allan Poe? You have to be kidding.

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Not better, perhaps, since Poe essentially created the modern horror story (that's who I voted for, by the way).

But pick up Dark Companions - every single story is creepy and frightening - like Night Stalker was when you were a kid. :D He's a genius.

His novels, on the other hand, can be difficult to get the mood Campbell intended, as his English is VERY English, and he uses colloquialisms that an American may not quite understand. For whatever reason, that seems to be a bigger problem in his novels than his short stories.

I admit to never having read Campbell, but his birthdate of post WWII tells a lot when comparing him to an author of Poe's stature. Poe's sentence structure is as good as Henry James, and his word choice is such that William F. Buckley would be forced to peruse a dictionary. Read the first paragraph of 'The Fall of the House of Usher', and you'll see how Poe has managed to maintain his stature among writers for more than 150 years.

I'm certain people here will vehemently disagree with what I'm about to say, but here goes. I think Poe was a border-line bad writer, on purpose. Allow me to explain.

I don't know much about his personal life, but I do know that he didn't achieve a high level of education. I'm just speculating here, but my theory is that given his lack of education, Poe developed an inferiority complex, reflected in his writing style. Let me just say that, diploma or no diploma, he certainly was a genius. That being said, he felt a need to show it in almost every sentence of his short stories. From obscure references and allusions (which he undoubtedly inserted to show the reader how well read he was) to his use of unnecessarily "big" words (which, although i know what many of them mean, still ruined the fluidity of many of his sentences) Poe could have done without them and perhaps became an even more timeless voice in literature. Although, many feel he still is timeless and I wont argue with that.

He certainly had a great imagination and could have easily been a much better writer had he not developed such a clunky, unnecessarily dense writing style. I love challenging reads, however, Poe's writing style is not challenging in a rewarding sense, a la Joyce or Faulkner. Having read many of his works, I could easily sense a struggle he had within himself about how he wanted to be perceived. Yes, we all do on some level, but with him it was too noticeable. I'm not saying he was an awful writer by any stretch of the imagination. His ideas were brilliant and his sense of how to create an atmosphere of fear and mystery are almost unrivaled. It's just his presentation that I have a minor problem with.

probably be more than equivalent to those with a PhD in literature today. A classical education was required in the early 1800s. If you read Poe, you'll see his many allusions to the classics. I'm certain he was well versed in the Iliad and Odyssey. I know several PhDs in American literature, none of whom have ever cracked Homer, and most of whom have not read Joyce.

Poe could construct sentences and paragraphs which to the lover of the written English word, has a flow that is beauteous. As I've suggested, read the first paragraph of 'The Fall of the House of Usher." This one paragraph should convince doubters as to Poe's abilities.

Many people on this forum do not like Henry James, as well as Poe. These are generally younger people who have not attained the level of reading ability to match their minds to the vocabulary and structure of Poe's prose.His poetry has been attacked for it's alliteration, but here we are only commenting on his writing of the horrorific. And he wrote much prose, his tales of mystery and ratiocination, which were not of the horrorific genre. For example, The Purloined Letter and the Gold Bug.

With Poe's addictions to alcohol and drugs, he lived a very short life. Who knows what he might have achieved if he had lived another ten or twenty years.

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Originally Posted by Kyriakos

Ghosts and Vampires in De Maupassant? I think you haven't read him at all

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Well, I was trying to define the 19th century horror in pretty simple and crude terms. I know Poe and De Maupassant are more than ghosts and vampires, but I don't see in their work any innovation. Poe was influenced by Germans like Hoffmann, Tieck and Chamiso, and the Gothic. It's a work full of haunted houses, sinister vendettas, scientists who come to bad ends, madmen, etc. Clichés then.

Lovecraft, by comparison, created a coherent cosmology. To say that he was just an imitator of Lord Dunsany is an insult to his imagination. The world of Pegana, a mere collection of some stories about gods who barely interact with each other, doesn't come close to the richness of the Chtully mythos that contains hierarchies, several species, recurring characters, prophecies, holy texts, and a web of incidents influencing mankind over the eons.

I also find his style far more enjoyable to read. Poe, whom I've recently re-read, is unbearable. I read him with joy as a little boy, in awful Portuguese translations, and I loved him. But reading him again in English is a torture to my good taste. I'll have to agree with Harold Bloom on this one: Poe is a writer benefits from translations. I wonder if the French would have loved him so much if they had read his stilted, dragged-out English.

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

probably be more than equivalent to those with a PhD in literature today. A classical education was required in the early 1800s. If you read Poe, you'll see his many allusions to the classics. I'm certain he was well versed in the Iliad and Odyssey. I know several PhDs in American literature, none of whom have ever cracked Homer, and most of whom have not read Joyce.

Poe could construct sentences and paragraphs which to the lover of the written English word, has a flow that is beauteous. As I've suggested, read the first paragraph of 'The Fall of the House of Usher." This one paragraph should convince doubters as to Poe's abilities.

Many people on this forum do not like Henry James, as well as Poe. These are generally younger people who have not attained the level of reading ability to match their minds to the vocabulary and structure of Poe's prose.His poetry has been attacked for it's alliteration, but here we are only commenting on his writing of the horrorific. And he wrote much prose, his tales of mystery and ratiocination, which were not of the horrorific genre. For example, The Purloined Letter and the Gold Bug.

With Poe's addictions to alcohol and drugs, he lived a very short life. Who knows what he might have achieved if he had lived another ten or twenty years.

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I looked it up. He only did a semester or two at the University of Virginia before dropping out due to financial difficulties. No one is denying that he was well-versed in the classics. However, I believe he was self-taught for the most part. And even if he was exposed to all the classics: Why did he feel the need to reference them so much? That usually alienates a lot of readers, even the readers of his time, with their PhD-caliber high school educations and all, as you claim. I think the sheer volume of his references speaks to the idea that he had some inferiority issues since he probably felt robbed by not being able to finish college and perhaps go on to do graduate studies. He was a brilliant guy who deserved all the degrees his friends were getting. Poe, therefore, basically gave himself a college education. That doesn't mean he was any better or worse than anyone else, but I'm sure it had an effect on his writing. In fact, I can provide some evidence on this matter. In the opening paragraph of Poe's short story "Bon-Bon", I think he is writing about himself when describing the character Bon-Bon. He writes:

Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no other man had ransacked — had read more than any other would have entertained a notion of reading — had understood more than any other would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to assert “that his dicta evinced neither the purity of the Academy, nor the depth of the Lyceum” — although, mark me, his doctrines were by no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them abstruse.


Also, you said:

"Many people on this forum do not like Henry James, as well as Poe. These are generally younger people who have not attained the level of reading ability to match their minds to the vocabulary and structure of Poe's prose."

That is, in my case at least, very inaccurate. It's also a very pretentious thing to say. A gross generalization at best. I never said I didn't like Poe. I enjoy many of his poems and short stories. I am not trashing him, but rather voicing a fair criticism of his writing style.

I had read once that Poe was the first to present a clearly ill desposition of the protagonist (with the stories being in the first person as well) without any criticism of this state at all, and thus it got to expand freely and become all the more pronounced as a state of decadence and near-madness.
At the same time he rejects that it is madness (his own understanding of "madness" though, from the story about the insane asylum, seems to have been very sketchy) since it is presented as being full of logic, and keeping the "analytical functions" to the full degree.
Such a struggle is perhaps not present in prior work, although i cannot be sure about that. And as Flabuert once wrote "the most improtant thing (in art) is to be different from your neighbour" :)

I should confess that i have not read much of Poe in the original english, probably only the cask of Amodillado, which gets a bit complicated, and is easier to read in the translations i have. But translations most of the time make the work better, unless of course the work was ultra-heavily reliant on symbols that work only in the original language (but then again its scope in a way is diminished i think).

But i always prefer long, complicated sentences (although i have come to not write like that anymore) to poor, simple ones. It is a matter similar perhaps, or perhaps it can be likened to, the ability of a painter to create a realistic image, but then choose to paint something deformed and symbolic, more expressive: if the painter has no ability for realism then his expressionism seems to be born not so much out of a need to express himself in such forms, but out of mere lack of ability to present more academically correct forms.

Oh, Heteronym, as for Tieck (i had once read a story by him, and very vaguely remember being interested i think) do you have anything of note to suggest? :)

And to answer Urb, regarding King: I am biased against King. I have read only parts of his work, but they drove me away. I gather he must be worth something, with all those publications he has and fame, but then again for me he didnt do anything at all, anything positive at any rate. Maybe im missing something he has for native english speakers, who knows.
But judging also from the movie adaptations of his work his plots seem to be simple, and the characters seem to be rather boring as well.
That said i wish i had his success ;)

HAS to be Poe...practically invented the genre, and beyond that I see his works and characters as not only being deeper and more rounded than most who followed him (not all, but most, and for a reason) but that he was more original (which is the most slipppery term to ever give an author as everyone gets there ideas SOMEWHERE...but as a good deal of horror writers that followed were heavily influenced by Poe...)

Shelley and her Frankenstein coems to mind for another spot...and Bram Stoker for his Dracula: where are they? Those weren't the hackneyed Halloween characters they are today in popular culture, they were something of a social commentary and reasonably deep, Shelly, her Dr. Frankenstein, and his Monster especially...not worthy of a spot?

They aren't there for a rather simple reason, i must say that i have not read them so have no opinnion of their worth...
But i did buy a copy of Dracula in the original english text, and am reading it these days :)

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Originally Posted by Lord Macbeth

HAS to be Poe...practically invented the genre...

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... yes, and you'll continue believing than if you never read E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, Horace Walpole (he only invented the Gothic genre), Charles Maturin, Ann Radcliffe, Charles Nodier...

Poe was such a writer of his time. He wrote what others were writing about: criminal madmen, paranoia, doppelgänger, scientific experiments with horrific outcomes. You're right, though: originality is a tricky thing. It depends a lot on how much (or little) one has read.

It's also true that he influenced many (bad ones), but I'd say that his influence is marginal in the works of Arthur Machen, who found horror in ancient gods (Pan), in the British fairy lore, and in nature (The Terror); of Vernon Lee, who mixed horror, art and history in a very intellectual way; or of Lovecraft, who made the whole universe a source of mysterious horrors. To confine these writers to Poe's style, so burdened with Gothic tropes, is being blind to their innovations.

Kyriakos, I don't know what I can recommend on Tieck; he's practically untranslated into English. You'll probably have some luck finding short-stories by him in German literature anthologies, especially of the Romantic period.

For the curious, this is the aforementioned first paragraph from "Fall of the House of Usher" from the online database of the Gutenberg Project:

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DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

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I think Algernon Blackwood is the best horror writer. For pure terror and horror, The Willows is the best story I've read. It beats anything Poe or Lovecraft did. Arthur Machen comes closest to Blackwood in conveying pure terror and horror in his story The Great God Pan.

Poe's place within the horror genre are not what is key to his stance as an influential writer, it's his influence on the form of the short story in English and French, especially the French because Poe was very popular in mid-late 19th century France.

He is certainly part of the gothic tradition, but that doesn't weaken his importance.

Maupassant, well he's one of the greatest short story writers in history. Although, he only wrote a handful of stories that can loosely be categorized as horror. Mostly later in life when he was suffering from mental illness. "The Horla" is pretty much his only major contribution directly to the horror genre.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin...&division=div1

Worth noting that one of the three versions of the Horla, the final one, interested Lovecraft a lot, probably because it must be the only cosmic horror story De Maupassant ever wrote (that is the only story where he argues that the horror is something that exists outside the mind, in physical form) :)

E.A.Poe. The one and only :)

I voted for Lovecraft, because he was the best at horor of those listed, but probably the best horror novel was Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber. Leiber was one of the originators of the Sword and Socery subgenre, and he wrote several very good horrlr novels.

I really dislike Henry James' long, verbose, boring novels; but his ghost stories are top shelf.


Or are we talking about M.R. James?

It is Henry James :)

Edgar Allan Poe is the best. My favorite because of his mystery tales. Love those.


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Delaware Prefab Homes

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Originally Posted by Jassy Melson

I think Algernon Blackwood is the best horror writer. For pure terror and horror, The Willows is the best story I've read. It beats anything Poe or Lovecraft did. Arthur Machen comes closest to Blackwood in conveying pure terror and horror in his story The Great God Pan.

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Agreed, perhaps excepting The Tell-Tale Heart, which still freaks me out. Think i'll re-read it when i'm reading The Fall Of The House Of Usher for the October short story book club. The part with the beam of light on the eye put me on edge more than anything else i've ever read!

Thanks for the Machen recommendation - will check it out in the near future.

ETA Hoffman definitely belongs on that list. The end of his short story The Sandman still sticks in my head, years after I read it, "Spin wooden dolly!" Though I'll add that for classy horror you can add writers like Browning and Coleridge for works like Childe Roland To the Dark Tower Came, or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lovecraft makes mention of them and other influential early horror writers in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Most of the nominees are relatively recent but people have been writing horror stories since the beginning of narrative. Specifically, I'm thinking of that werewolf story in the Lays of Marie de France, but there must be numerous earlier works. If ancient Greeks could write science fiction stories, then I'm sure they had some version of horror that slips my mind at the moment.

Other good writers which deserve a nod include Charlotte Perkins Gilman for The Yellow Wallpaper, W. W. Jacobs for The Monkey's Paw, Shirley Jackson for The Lottery, Washington Irving for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Nathaniel Hawthorne for Young Goodman Brown, Joseph Conrad steps it up in all of his psychological horror writings, and then there's the Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan.

I agree about the Sandman, and also Councelor Krespel, which has a similar theme with automatons :)

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

ETA Hoffman definitely belongs on that list. The end of his short story The Sandman still sticks in my head, years after I read it, "Spin wooden dolly!" Though I'll add that for classy horror you can add writers like Browning and Coleridge for works like Childe Roland To the Dark Tower Came, or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lovecraft makes mention of them and other influential early horror writers in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Most of the nominees are relatively recent but people have been writing horror stories since the beginning of narrative. Specifically, I'm thinking of that werewolf story in the Lays of Marie de France, but there must be numerous earlier works. If ancient Greeks could write science fiction stories, then I'm sure they had some version of horror that slips my mind at the moment.

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They definitely had werewolf stories. I distinctly remember the one in Herodotus.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

They definitely had werewolf stories. I distinctly remember the one in Herodotus.

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Well yeah, there are supernatural incidents in the books. For instance, Thessaly had a reputation for witchcraft surpassing that of Salem. There's ghosts in The Orestea and harpies in the Aeneid, but that doesn't make the books horror stories. The monsters that Theseus and Hercules battle are clearly the boogiemen of Greek folklore, and Plutarch talks about the dead rising from the grave, men on fire walking through the streets, strange flights of birds, and what have you; but none of those are more than embellishments to a greater narrative we'd label history, biography, mythology, comedy, or epic.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Well yeah, there are supernatural incidents in the books. For instance, Thessaly had a reputation for witchcraft surpassing that of Salem. There's ghosts in The Orestea and harpies in the Aeneid, but that doesn't make the books horror stories. The monsters that Theseus and Hercules battle are clearly the boogiemen of Greek folklore, and Plutarch talks about the dead rising from the grave, men on fire walking through the streets, strange flights of birds, and what have you; but none of those are more than embellishments to a greater narrative we'd label history, biography, mythology, comedy, or epic.

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Yeah, which is why I didn't label them horror stories. I only meant to point out that many of our horror monsters that we have today have precedents in the ancient world.

Horror, in my opinion, has always been more about mood/tone/emotion it evokes in the reader than what its actual content consists of.

Why doesn't King qualify? I'll be the first to admit that he's written his share of garbage, but I truly believe stories like The Stand, The Shining, The Mist, Children of the Corn, Apt Pupil, and Pet Semetary stand at the pinnacle of the horror genre. King truly has a gift for developing character and mood.

Anyways, I voted for Lovecraft. He was a hugely flawed writer, that's for sure, but he was still a genius for ideas and atmosphere.

I am a bit biased against King, which is why i did not include him + i have not read one full work by him (but heavily disliked what of his i read, and also didnt like the movies, apart from apt pupil) and so it would be pointless to have him in the poll.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

Yeah, which is why I didn't label them horror stories. I only meant to point out that many of our horror monsters that we have today have precedents in the ancient world.

Horror, in my opinion, has always been more about mood/tone/emotion it evokes in the reader than what its actual content consists of.

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Yet, the Lamia legend can be very close to what we call horror.
Anyways, talking about ancient world, Persian literature had a considerable ammount of tales reggarding Vampires.

I would mention Beckford Vathek as a notable horror story.

By the way, you people are diminishing considerable the real importance of Poe. He did not invented any of the genres people mentions (detective stories, horror, science fiction - well, he invented one genre, which is the Scientific Monography Cosmology Poem named Eureka, but people do not remember it).

The importance of Poe as a critic and even as poet (the few times he hit the nail) join together that he was a thinker of format, the first to defend and develop a clear aesthetical justification for short stories. Until him, almost nobody dared to be a great writer trying to write short prose. He settled the rules which already existed and because of that managed to produce some short of arquetypical horror stories. He may not have produced the best (as short story writers, his followers produced better examples and Henry James, Melville, Maupassant, Conrad (the Horla is either a vampire or ghost story, how can be otherwise) and a few others produced superior psychological stories and Stevenson just was more perfect than him. But he is clear the pioneer that did quite well, for quite so many.