Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction [Volume I]

A strictly personal no holds barred overview of the horror field by one of its most respected--and fiercest--critics. This book was many years in the making. I ve been reading horror fiction pretty constantly since I was at least 10 years old, and have been a scholar in the field since I was about 17 (focusing initially on H. P. Lovecraft). UNUTTERABLE HORROR was the product of five years of solid work, and the book comes to a total of 312,000 words. It covers the entire range of supernatural and non-supernatural horror fiction from the Gilgamesh (1700 B.C.) to such contemporary writers as Caitlín R. Kiernan and Laird Barron. Along the way I discuss the Gothic novel, Edgar Allan Poe, the Victorian ghost story, Ambrose Bierce, the five titans of the early 20th century (Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft), Walter de la Mare, American pulp writers from Robert Bloch to Ray Bradbury, the horror boom of the 1970s and 1980s (William Peter Blatty, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Anne Rice), and many others. This book is intended not only as a history of the field but a guide to the best writing in the field over the past two or three centuries.