Early horror writers
A list of those pre-WWII writers of horror stories adapted into film or TV.
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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 merchant in Richmond, Virginia, and was sent to a boarding school in London, England. He later attended the University of Virginia for one year, but dropped out and ran up massive gambling debts after spending all of his tuition money. John Allan broke off Poe's engagement to his fiancée Sarah Royster. Poe was heartbroken, traumatized, and broke. He had no way out and enlisted in the army in May of 1827. At the same time Poe published his first book, "Tamerlane and Other Poems" (1827). In 1829, he became a West Point cadet, but was dismissed after 6 months for disobedience. By that time he published "Al Aaraf" (1929) and "Poems by Edgar A. Poe" (1831), with the funds contributed by his fellow cadets. His early poetry, though written in the manner of Lord Byron, already shows the musical effects of his verses.
Poe moved in with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her teenage daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm, whom he married before she was 14 years old. He earned respect as a critic and writer. In his essays "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe formulated important literary theories. But his career suffered from his compulsive behavior and from alcoholism. He did produce, however, a constant flow of highly musical poems, of which "The Raven" (1845) and "The Bells" (1849) are the finest examples. Among his masterful short stories are "Ligeia" (1838), "The Fall of the House of Usher"(1839) and "The Masque of the Red Death". Following his own theory of creating "a certain unique or single effect", Poe invented the genre of the detective story. His works: "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is probably the first detective story ever published.
Just when his life began to settle, Poe was devastated by the death of his wife Virginia in 1847. Two years later he returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his former fiancée, Sarah Royster, who, by that time, was a widow. But shortly after their happy reconciliation he was found unconscious on a street in Baltimore. Poe was taken to the Washington College Hospital where Doctor John Moran diagnosed "lesions on the brain" (the Doctor believed Poe was mugged). He died 4 days later, briefly coming in and out of consciousness, just to whisper his last words, "Lord, help my poor soul." The real cause of his death is still unknown and his death certificate has disappeared. Poe's critic and personal enemy, named Rufus Griswold, published an insulting obituary; later he visited Poe's home and took away all of the writer's manuscripts (which he never returned), and published his "Memoir" of Poe, in which he forged a madman image of the writer.
The name of the woman in Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" was used by Vladimir Nabokov in 'Lolita' as the name for Humbert's first love, Annabelle Leigh. Nabokov also used in 'Lolita' some phrases borrowed from the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was set to music by Claude Debussy as an opera. Sergei Rachmaninoff created a musical tribute to Poe by making his favorite poem "The Bells" into the eponymous Choral Symphony.- Writer
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 museum. After writing a dissertation: "The Apocalypse of St. Peter", he became a Fellow of King's, and then Dean. Although he was renowned in some circles for his biographies, studies into antiques, reviews and palaeography, it was his ghost stories that he would be remembered for. He was keenly engaged in examining the supernatural, and his stories were always written in a way so the reader uses their imagination. The real horror is often kept to the reader's mind. Celebrated cult horror novelist and story writer H.P. Lovecraft was a fan, and wrote a review on his work: "...gifted with an almost diabolic power of calling horror by gentle steps from the midst of prosaic daily life." he says, also adding: "Dr. James has, it is clear, an intelligent and scientific knowledge of human nerves and feelings; and knows just how to apportion statement, imagery, and subtle suggestions in order to secure the best results with his readers." Although largely ignored by filmmakers - Curse of the Demon (1957) - is one exception), his work has a dedicated fan base, and the BBC filmed several of his stories in the 1970s, wisely titling them under the series "A Ghost Story for Christmas". In 2000, horror legend Christopher Lee jumped at the chance to read four of James' stories in another Christmas special screened on BBC2. James' most famous works include "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary", "The Five Jars", "A Warning to the Curious and other Ghost Stories" and "The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James".- 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 famous novel is considered to be "At the Mountains of Madness", about an expedition to the South Pole, which discovers strange creatures beneath a mountain.See also: Lovecraftian films
Also quite a few of these writers influenced Lovecraft and got mentioned in his Supernatural Horror in Literature - Sheridan Le Fanu was born on 28 August 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 7 February 1873 in Dublin, Ireland, UK [now Republic of Ireland].
- Arthur Machen was born on 3 March 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 30 March 1947 in England, UK.
- Algernon Blackwood was born on 14 March 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 10 December 1951 in Bishopsteighton, Kent, England, UK.
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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 Student League, in New York. Chambers studied art at The Académie Julian in Paris. He also spent a summer studying and writing at the University of Munich. It is during this time that he penned his first novel, In the Quarter. Once he left Munich he returned to art school but did so at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts. By the time he was in his mid-twenties Chambers was already exhibiting his art at salons in Paris. Returning to America in 1892, Chambers soon began drawing illustrations for magazines like Vogue, Life and True. It was during this period that Chambers and his friend, Charles Dana Gibson, submitted sketches they had drawn of each other to Life magazine. Chambers' sketch of Gibson was published, Gibson's sketch was rejected. Gibson would get the last laugh though, when after becoming successful he purchased Life magazine. In 1912 Gibson provided the illustrations in Chambers' book "Blue-Bird Weather".
Chambers originally began submitting articles, accompanied with his illustrations, to magazines and newspapers before concentrating on writing full time. Over the next forty years or so, he would publish 72 novels, numerous short stories and several plays. Chambers' early writings would cover such diverse subject matters as the supernatural and historical romances. A heavy taskmaster, Chambers would often work on three or four projects at a time. His early work won him high praise from literary critics, but as he became more successful, the critics grew more critical. His opinion of critics nosedived after one reviewer said of his mystic collection of short stories, "The King in Yellow", "a splendid success of horror, which haunts the memory of all who have read it", and another had suggested the book was written under the influence of drugs.
A man of varied interests, Chambers was a historian, artist, outdoors man, collector of rare furniture and fine art, expert on Chinese and Japanese antiquities, collector of North American butterflies and a conservationist. Chambers was once responsible for the planting of around 25,000 trees in Broadalbin, New York.
Chambers, who was a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote a number of historical novels, usually set in Colonial America or the Revolutionary and Civil War periods. His interest in the legendary Captain Kidd led him to write a rather sympathetic treatment of Kidd's life entitled, "The Man They Hung".
A small example of additional works by Chambers that were popular with the public are: "The Red Republic," "A King and a Few Dukes," "The Maker of Moons," "With the Band," "The Mystery of Choice," "Lorraine," "Ashes of Empire," "The Maid-at-Arms," "Outdoor Land," "The Maids of Paradise," "Orchard-Land," "Forest-Land," "The Haunts of Men," "The Cambric Mask," "Cardigan", "The Fighting Chance", "The Firing Line", "Iole", "The Witch of Ellangowan" and "Ailsa Paige". His popularity was such that during his lifetime first edition copies of his books were wildly treasured among book collectors.
Robert William Chambers died in New York City on 16 December, 1933 after an unsuccessful operation to alleviate an intestinal disorder. He was survived by his wife, the former Elsa Vaughn Moller (1882-1939), a son, author Robert Edward Stuart Chambers (a.k.a. Robert Husted Chambers) and a brother, renowned architect Walter Boughton Chambers (1866-1945).- 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 work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter.
Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Ireland's longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and traveled and hunted extensively. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis.
Writers influenced by Dunsany (Removed from Wikipedia)
H. P. Lovecraft was greatly impressed by Dunsany after seeing him on a speaking tour of the United States, and Lovecraft's "Dream Cycle" stories, his dark pseudo-history of how the universe came to be, and his god Azathoth all clearly show Dunsany's influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces-but alas-where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
Robert E. Howard included Dunsany in a list of his favorite poets in a 1932 letter to Lovecraft. Lovecraft also wrote a poem about Dunsany.
Clark Ashton Smith was familiar with Dunsany's work, and it had some influence on his own fantasy stories.
J. R. R. Tolkien, according to John D. Rateliff's report,[28] presented Clyde S. Kilby with a copy of The Book of Wonder as kind of a preparation to his auxiliary role in the compilation and development of The Silmarillion during the Sixties.[29] Tolkien's letters and divulged notes made allusions to two of the stories found in this volume, "Chu-Bu and Sheemish" and "The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller."
Dale J. Nelson has argued in Tolkien Studies 01 that Tolkien may have been inspired by another of The Book of Wonder's tales, "The Hoard of the Gibbelins," while writing one of his poems, "The Mewlips," included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
Guillermo Del Toro, the filmmaker, has cited Dunsany as an influence.
Neil Gaiman has expressed admiration for Dunsany and has written an introduction to a collection of his stories. Some commentators have posited links between The King of Elfland's Daughter and Gaiman's Stardust (book and film), a connection seemingly supported by a comment of Gaiman's quoted in The Neil Gaiman Reader.
Jorge Luis Borges included Dunsany's short story "The Idle City" in Antología DE la Literatura Fantástica (1940, revised 1976), a collection of short works Borges selected and provided forewords for. Borges also, in his essay "Kafka and His Precursors," included Dunsany's story "Carcassonne" as one of the texts that presaged, or paralleled, Kafka's themes.
Donald Wandrei, in a 7 February 1927 letter to H.P. Lovecraft, listed Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter among his collection of "weird books" that Wandrei had read.
Talbot Mundy greatly admired Dunsany's "plays and fantasy", according to Mundy biographer Brian Taves.
C. M. Kornbluth was an avid reader of Dunsany as a young man, and mentions Dunsany in his short fantasy story "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell" (1941).
Arthur C. Clarke enjoyed Dunsany's work and corresponded with him between 1944 and 1956. Those letters are collected in the book Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence. Clarke also edited and allowed the use of an early essay as an introduction to one volume of The Collected Jorkens and that essay acknowledges the link between Jorkens and Tales from the White Hart. Clarke states, humorously, that any reader who sees a link between the two works will *not* be hearing from his solicitors.
Manly Wade Wellman esteemed Dunsany's fiction.
Margaret St. Clair was an admirer of Dunsany's work, and her story "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951) is a sequel to Dunsany's "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles".
Evangeline Walton stated in an interview that Dunsany inspired her to write fantasy.
Jack Vance was a keen reader of Dunsany's work as a child.
Michael Moorcock often cites Dunsany as a strong influence.
Peter S. Beagle also cites Dunsany as an influence, and wrote an introduction for one of the recent reprint editions.
David Eddings once named Lord Dunsany as his personal favorite fantasy writer, and recommended aspiring authors to sample him.
Gene Wolfe used one of Dunsany's poems to open his bestselling 2004 work The Knight.
Fletcher Pratt's 1948 novel The Well of the Unicorn was written as a sequel to Dunsany's play King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior. Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay on style in fantasy "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", wryly referred to Lord Dunsany as the "First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy", alluding to the (at the time) very common practice of young writers attempting to write in Lord Dunsany's style.
M. J. Engh has acknowledged Lord Dunsany as an influence on her work.
Welleran Poltarnees, an author of numerous non-fantasy "blessing books" employing turn-of-the-century artwork, is a pen name based on two of Lord Dunsany's most famous stories.
Gary Myers's 1975 short story collection The House of the Worm is a double pastiche of Dunsany and Lovecraft.
Álvaro Cunqueiro openly admitted the influence of Lord Dunsany on his work. - Abraham Merritt was born on 20 January 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 21 August 1943 in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, USA.
- Ambrose Bierce was born on 24 June 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 11 O'Clock: a Sense of Imminent Calamity (2023). He was married to Mary Ellen "Mollie" Day. He died in 1914 in Mexico.
- 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 husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
After Wollstonecraft's death less than a month after her daughter Mary was born, Mary was raised by Godwin, who was able to provide his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his own liberal political theories. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbor, with whom, as her stepmother, Mary came to have a troubled relationship.
In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father's political followers, the then married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and traveled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.
In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel "Frankenstein". The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53.
Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel "Frankenstein", which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels "Valperga" (1823) and "Perkin Warbeck" (1830), the apocalyptic novel "The Last Man" (1826), and her final two novels, "Lodore" (1835) and "Falkner" (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book "Rambles in Germany and Italy" (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia" (1829-46), support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin - Writer
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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 of the Sea" and "Famous Imposters." He was the stage manager for actor Sir Henry Irving and wrote "Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving," after Irving's death.- Writer
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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 Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children. Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States.- Clark Ashton Smith was born on 13 January 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 14 August 1961 in California, USA.
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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 writing, he was an actor and created a vaudeville theater the same year he made his literary debut. He also founded another acting company that toured Central and Eastern Europe, but he abandoned the theater due to censorship.
It was his stories about the occult and horror that made his name. His first novel "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" was published in 1910 and his masterpiece, "Alarune", in 1911. The two novels were part of a trilogy based on the autobiographical character of Frank Braun, who also appears in the 1921 novel "Vampyr".
Ewers was deeply attracted to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Nietzschean philosophy of the "intellectuals" of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, as well as their nationalism (to say nothing of their mysticism) attracted him to the Nazi Party, though he never joined it. Though he wrote a novel based on the life of Nazi martyr Horst Wessel, allegedly at the bequest of Adolf Hitler, his works were banned by the Nazis in 1934.
A penniless Hanns Heinz Ewers died from tuberculosis on June 12, 1943 in Berlin. He was 72 years old.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).