Adapted from
the tour de force of H. P. Lovecraft in his essay Supernatural Horror in
Literature
All of the
entries in this article are listed in their order of presentation in Supernatural
Horror in Literature. Wherever multiple works are listed which share the
same author, the author is mentioned after the last member of the works. From
this index, we can have a better idea of the literary world that H. P.
Lovecraft lived in and in which his Gothic imagination lived.
I.
Introduction
Childe Roland
by Browning
The Turn of
the Screw by Henry James
Elsie Venner
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Wandering
Ghosts (a collection, may contain these other tales)
The Upper
Berth by Marion Crawford
The Yellow
Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Monkey’s
Paw by W. W. Jacobs
II. The Dawn
of the Horror Tale
A book of folklore from the middle ages assembled by Sabine Baring-Gould
Satyricon by
Petronius
ApuleiusPliny
the Younger to Sura
On Wonderful
Events by Phlegon
Proclus relates
Phlegon’s work
Bride of
Corinth by Goethe
German
Student by Irving
Adventures of
Ferdinand Count Fathom by Smollett
III. The
Early Gothic Novel
Tam O’Shanter
by Burns for witchcraft
Christabel
Ancient
Mariner by Coleridge
Lamia by
Keats
Lenore
Wild Huntsman
by Bürger
The Ring by
Thomas Moore was inspired by German lyric
Faust by
Goethe
The Castle of
Otranto by Horace Walpole, while mediocre, exerted “an almost unparalleled
influence on the literature of the weird.”
Works of Mrs.
Barbauld
Sir Bertrand
by Ms. Aikin in 1773
The Old
English Baron by Clara Reeve, inspired by Otranto
The Recess by
Sophia Lee charactarizes the Walpole method
The Castles
of Athlin and Dunbayne
A Sicilian
Romance
The Romance
of the Forest
The Mysteries
of Udolpho
The Italian
Gaston de
Blondeville by Ann Radcliffe
Edgar Huntly
Ormond
Arthur Marvyn
Wieland; or,
The Transformation by Charles Brocken Down
IV. The Apex
of Gothic Romance
The Monk in
1796
The Castle
Spectre
Tales of
Terror
Tales of
Wonder by Matthew Gregory Lewis
Northanger
Abbey by Miss Austen is “by no means an unmerited rebuke to a school which had
sunk far towards absurdity.”
Fatal
Revenge; or, The Family of Montorio in 1807
Melmoth the
Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin in1820
Manfred by
Byron
Don Juan by
Molier
Melmoth
Reconciled by Balzac
V. The
Aftermath of Gothic Fiction
“A dreary
plethora of trash”:
Horrid
Mysteries by Marquis von Grosse in 1796
Children of
the Abbey by Mrs. Roche in 1796
Zofloya; or,
The Moor by Miss Dacre in 1806
Zastrozzi in
1810
St. Irvyne by
Shelley in 1811
[Some gems]:
History of
the Caliph Vathek by William Beckford
Arabian
Nights
Episodes of
Vathek in Life and Letters of William Beckford by lewis Melville
Caleb
Williams
St. Leon by
William Godwin
The Iron
Chest by George Colman
The Magus by Francis Barrett in 1801
Faust and the Demon
Wagner, the
Wehr-wolf by George Reynolds
The Last Man
Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus by Shelley in 1818
The Vampyre
by Polidori
Redgauntlet
Letters on
Demonology and Witchcraft by Sir Walter Scott in 1830
Tales of a
Traveller by Washington Irving in 1824
The Epicurean
by Thomas Moore in 1827
The Werwolf
The Phantom
Ship by Marryat in 1839
The Signalman
by Dickens
The House and
the Brain
Zanoni in
1842
A Strange
Story by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1862
Varney, the
Vampyre by Thomas Preskett Prest in 1847
She by Rider
Haggard
Markheim
The
Body-Snatcher
Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde by Robert Luis Stevenson
Wuthering
Heights by Emily Brontë
VI. Spectral
Literature on the Continent
[German]:
Short stories
by Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann “convey the grotesque rather than the
terrible.”
Undine by
Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Monte Fouque in 1811, “most artistic of
all the Continental weird tales”.
Treatsie on
Elementat Spirits by Paracelcus
Amber Witch
by Wilhelm Meinhold
The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Alraune
The Spider by
Hanns Heinz Ewers
[French]:
Hans of
Iceland by Victor Hugo
The Wild
Ass’s Skin
Seraphita
Louis Lambert
by Balzac
Avatar
The Foot of
the Mummy
Clarimonde
One of
Cleopatra’s Nights by Theophile Gautier
The
Temptation of St. Anthony by Gustave Flaubert
Works by
Baudelaire
Works by
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Venus of Ille
by Prosper Merimee
The Spectre
He?
Who Knows?
The Horla “is
generally regarded as the masterpiece”
The Diary of
a Madman
The White
Wolf
On the River
Horror by Guy
de Maupassant
The Man-Wolf
The Invisible
Eye
The Owl’s Ear
The Waters of
Death by Erckmann-Chatrian
Torture by
Hope by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam
[Jewish]:
The Golem by
Gustav Meyrink
The Dybbuk by
Ansky
VII. Edgar
Allan Poe
[you may
consider this all of Poe’s works]
VIII. The
Weird Tradition in America
A Wonder Book
Tanglewood
Tales
Grimshawe’s
Street
The Marble
Faun
Septimius
Felton and Dolliver Romance
Legends of
the Province House
House of the
Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
What was it?
“the prototype of de Maupassant’s ‘Horla’”
Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O’Brien
The Damned
Thing
The Suitable
Surroundings
The Middle
Toe of the Right Foot
Can Such
Things Be? (a collection, may contain these other tales)
In the Midst
of Life (a collection, may contain these other tales)
The Death of
Halpin Frayser and other stories by Ambrose Bierce
The King in
Yellow
The Maker of
Moons
In Search of
the Unknown by Robert W. Chambers
The Dead Valley by Ralph Adams Cram
Fishhead and
other tales by Irvin S. Cobb
The Dark Chamber by Leonard Cline in 1927
The Palace Called DagonHerbert S. Gorman
Sinister
House by Leland Hall “has touches of magnificent atmosphere by is marred by a
somewhat mediocre romanticism.”
The Song of
the Sirens
Lukundoo
The Snout by
Edward Lucas White
The
Hashish-Eater
The Double
Shadow by Clark Ashton Smith, wherin his “best work can be found”
IX. The Weird
Tradition in the British Isles
The Phantom
‘Rickshaw’
The Finest
Story in the World
The Recrudescence
of Imray
The Mark of
the Beast by Rudyard Kipling
Fantastics
Kwaidan by
Lafcadio Hearn
Picture of
Dorian Gray by Wilde
Xelucha
The House of
Sounds, “Mr. Shiel’s undoubted masterpiece”
The Purple
Cloud by Matthew Phipps Shiel
The Lair of
the White Worm
The Jewel of
the Seven Stars
Dracula by
Bram Stoker
The Beetle by
Richard Marsh
Brood of the
Witch-Queen by “Sax Rohmer” Arthur Sarsfield Ward
The Door of
the Unreal by Gerald Bliss
Cold Harbour
by Francis Brett Young
Witch Wood
The Green
Wildebeest
The Wind in
the Portico
Skule Skerry
by John Buchan
The Were-Wolf
by Clemence Housman
The Elixir of
Life by Arthur Ransome
The Shadowy
Thing by H. B. Drake
Lilith by
George Macdonald
The Return
Seaton’s Aunt
The Tree
Out of the
Deep
A Recluse
Mr. Kempe
All-Hallows
The Listeners
by Walter de la Mare
The Man Who
Went Too Far
Visible and
Invisible (a collection, may contain these other tales)
The Face
They Return
at Evening
Others who
Return by H. R. Wakefield “manages now and then to achieve great heights of
horror despite a vitiating air of sophistication”
The Ghost of
Fear
Thirty
Strange Stories by H. G. Wells
The Captain
of the ‘Pole-Star’
Lot No. 249
by A. Conan Doyle
Mrs. Lunt by
Hugh Walpole
The Smoking
Leg by John Metcalfe, especially “The Bad Lands”
The Celestial
Ombinus by E. M. Forster, “inclined toward the amiable and innocuous phantasy”
The
collection of short stories by H. D. Everett
A Visitor
from Down Under by L. P. Hartley
Uncanny
Stories by May Sinclair
The Boats of
the ‘Glen Carrig’ in 1907
The House on
the Borderland in 1908
The Ghost
Pirates in 1909
The Night
Land in 1912
Carnacki, the
Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
Works of
Joseph Conrad
X. The Modern
Masters
Chronicle of
Clemendy
The Hill of
Dreams
The Great God
Pan in 1894
The White
People
The Three
Impostors
The Red Hand
The Shining
Pyramid
The Teror
The Great
Return by Arthur Machen
The Willows
The Wendigo
An Episode
in Lodging House
Incredible
Adventures
John Silence
– Physician Extraordinary
Jimbo
The Centaur
by Algernon Blackwood
The Book of
Wonder
A Dreamer’s
Tales
The Gods of
the Mountain
The Laughter
of the Gods
The Queen’s
Enemies by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Eighteenth Baron Dunsany
Ghost-Stories
of an Antiquary
More
Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary
A Thin Ghost
and Others
A Warning to
the Curious
The Five Jars
Count Magnus,
which may be contained in the above collections
The Treasure
of Abbot Thomas, which may be contained in the above collections
Oh, Whistle,
and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, which may be contained in the above collections
An Episode of
Cathedral History, which may be contained in the above collections, by Montague
Rhodes James, Provost of Eton College
It would do
one good to have this list compiled in chronological order of publication, but
such a prospect is far in the future. H. P. Lovecraft's essay reveals several
views of his concerning literary works and authors across diverse time-periods,
and it is my future hope to post these excerpts for the purpose of quick
reference.
