Most notable horror story writer?

[Heteronym]

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

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.

[Vautrin]

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.

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.

[Kyriakos]

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

[Lord Macbeth]

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?

[Kyriakos]

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

[Heteronym]

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

... 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.

[LuggageFan]

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

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.

[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.

[OrphanPip]

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

[Kyriakos]

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)

[Sine_lege]

E.A.Poe. The one and only

[PeterL]

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.

[Night_Lamp]

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


Or are we talking about M.R. James?

[Kyriakos]

It is Henry James

[davidboom]

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


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