Reprinted from Green Man Review.
H. P. Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror In Literature” has been one of my favorite critical writings on horror for years, and I have reread it often. The only thing which could have improved upon H. P. Lovecraft’s classic work on horror is the annotations and introduction provided by S. T. Joshi, possibly the foremost commentator on all things Lovecraft. While “Supernatural Horror In Literature” was first published in 1927 and the annotated edition was published in 2000, this remains one of the dark jewels of books on horror, a must-read for any serious horror fan.
Long before Stephen King set out to write Danse Macabre in order to provide a discussion of his favorite horror themes, Lovecraft had created his own manifesto of required reading in the horror genre. Yet, this work is much more than a mere reading list, for it includes Lovecraft’s own history of the horror tale, including its influence upon such works as Beowulf and Dante’s Inferno. The sections of Lovecraft’s extended essay are arranged in chronological order, and include sections on the Gothic novel, the Romantic poets, Edgar Allan Poe, and separate sections on the weird tradition in America and the British Isles.
Lovecraft’s language is a treat in itself. While few writers could get away with the over-the-top prose style nowadays, there is something delightfully theatrical about descriptions such as the following:
Horror in literature attains a new malignity in the work of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), whose novel The Monk (1796) achieved marvellous popularity and earned him the nickname of “Monk” Lewis. This young author, educated in Germany and saturated with a body of wild Teuton lore unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, turned to terror in forms more violent than his gentle predecessor had ever dared to think of; and produced as a result a masterpiece of active nightmare whose general Gothic cast is spiced with added stores of ghoulishness.
While some of the masters Lovecraft pays homage to have, perhaps, not aged well, and often strike modern readers as dry and overly-wordy, other horror masters such as Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany remain riveting, mysterious, and even lyrical. Lovecraft’s discussion thus serves as an introduction to some of the best in early twentieth-century horror and, as many of these works are out of copyright, many or even most of these stories are easily available to any horror reader with an Internet connection.
Joshi’s annotations complement Lovecraft’s text by providing information about dates and contexts, along with many quotes from Lovecraft’s letters and other writings. For any reader who wishes to pursue further Lovecraftian studies or follow up on the writers mentioned by Lovecraft in his essay, any book edited by Joshi should prove useful.
(Hippocampus Press, 2000)
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