Early horror writers
by Mighty_Emperor | created - 25 Nov 2012 | updated - 03 Apr 2013 | PublicA list of those pre-WWII writers of horror stories adapted into film or TV.
Comments: As I don't have a Facebook account I cannot interact with the new comments system, so have switched it off. I will start a thread on the message board and link it in here shortly.
1. Edgar Allan Poe
Writer | Eliza Graves
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco ...
2. M.R. James
Writer | The Runes
Born in 1862, Montague Rhodes James developed a reading habit at an early age, preferring to stay in the library than with friends. He took this with him when he went to study at Eton and then at the King's College, Cambridge, where he became assistant in classical archaeology at the Fitzwilliam ...
3. H.P. Lovecraft
Writer | Color Out of Space
Born in Providence, Lovecraft was a sickly child whose parents died insane. When he was 16, he wrote the astronomy column in the Providence Tribune. Between 1908 and 1923, he wrote short stories for Weird Tales magazine and others. He died in Providence, in poverty, on March 15, 1937. His most ...
See also: Lovecraftian films
Also quite a few of these writers influenced Lovecraft and got mentioned in his Supernatural Horror in Literature
4. Sheridan Le Fanu
Writer | Mystery and Imagination
Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28, 1814 in Dublin, Ireland, UK [now Republic of Ireland]. Sheridan was a writer, known for Mystery and Imagination (1966), The Judge's House and Vampyr (1932). Sheridan was married to Susanna Bennett. Sheridan died on February 7, 1873 in Dublin, Ireland, UK [now...
5. Arthur Machen
Writer | Hill of Dreams
Arthur Machen was born on March 3, 1863 in Caerleon, Wales, UK. He was a writer, known for Hill of Dreams. He was married to Dorothie Purefoy Hudleston and Amelia Hogg. He died on March 30, 1947 in England, UK.
6. Algernon Blackwood
Writer | The Willows
Algernon Blackwood was born on March 14, 1869 in Shooter's Hill, Kent, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The Willows, Tales of Mystery (1961) and The Human Chord. He died on December 10, 1951 in Bishopsteighton, Kent, England, UK.
7. Robert W. Chambers
Writer | The Black Secret
Robert William Chambers, one of the more prolific and popular American authors of late nineteenth and early twentieth century, was born on 26 May, 1865 in Brooklyn to a prominent New York family.
Chambers spent his younger years at the Brooklyn Polytechnic School,after which he attended the Art ...
8. Lord Dunsany
Writer | Suspense
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany; 24 July 1878 - 25 October 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime and both original ...
9. Abraham Merritt
Writer | Seven Footprints to Satan
Abraham Merritt was born on January 20, 1884 in Beverly, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer, known for Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) and The Devil-Doll (1936). He died on August 21, 1943 in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, USA.
10. Ambrose Bierce
Writer | The Damned Thing Is of Such a Color!
Ambrose Bierce was born on June 24, 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio, USA. He was a writer, known for The Damned Thing is of Such a Color! (2020), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Il fascino dell'insolito (1980). He was married to Mary Ellen "Mollie" Day. He died in 1914 in Mexico.
11. Mary Shelley
Writer | Young Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her...
12. Bram Stoker
Writer | Dracula
Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery ...
13. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Writer | Graves and Goblins
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi ...
14. Clark Ashton Smith
Writer | Night Gallery
Clark Ashton Smith was born on January 13, 1893 in Long Valley, California, USA. He was a writer, known for Night Gallery (1969), Cineficción Radio (2019) and The Last Incantation (2019). He was married to Carolyn Jones Dorman. He died on August 14, 1961 in California, USA.
15. Hanns Heinz Ewers
Writer | Der Student von Prag
Hanns Heinz Ewers (born November 3, 1871 in Düsseldorf, Germany) was a German writer famous for his short stories and novels that expanded the parameters of the horror genre. He began his literary career as a poet when he published "A Book of Fables", satirical verses, in 1901. In addition to ...
His flirtation with National Socialism (which turned out badly for him) has seen his work overlooked (often deliberately so), but he was highly influential and his work has been frequently adapted, with the 1913 Student of Prague being one of the first full-length horror films (the second one according to IMDB).
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