by Matt Cardin
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued!
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each dying form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
Source: Poe, Edgar Allan. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. 1914. Vol. 10. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 34–35.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.” (Poe 1845, 143)
The poem became an instant success, as its theatricality made it a parlor performance favorite. It brought Poe fame, but little money, and created a host of parodies, remaining still the most famous Gothic poem ever written. With its raven intoning the meaningless “Nevermore,” the public loved the mysterious nature of the work, so much so that Poe attempted to cash in on his success with an explanation of the poem’s creation. Nevertheless, his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) did little to explain away the mysteries of what was intended. The main theme seems to be the perverse desire to both forget and remember a traumatic event, but beyond that, the narrator’s need to make sense of the raven’s meaningless repetitions suggests the loss of an irretrievable past. Beyond all this remains the attraction of the poem’s mesmeric alliteration and its verbal dexterity, which is both formulaic and yet surprising.
Poe’s work represents the end for Gothic taste in poetry, although the taste for medievalized Gothic poetry continued up to the end of the nineteenth century, with the work of Browning and Poe evolving into the work of Decadents such as Charles Baudelaire and Symbolists such as Algernon Swinburne, with poetry that catered to urban and perverse tastes unaccompanied by any interest in Gothic trappings. Gothic poetry was finally sublimated into the imaginative world of the silent movie and European cabaret.
Clive Bloom
See also: The Gothic Literary Tradition; Part One, Horror through History: Horror in the Eighteenth Century; Horror in the Nineteenth Century; Part Three, Reference Entries: Baudelaire, Charles; Byron, Lord; Lewis, Matthew Gregory; “Ligeia”; Melmoth the Wanderer; The Monk; The Mysteries of Udolpho; Poe, Edgar Allan; Radcliffe, Ann; The Sublime; Terror versus Horror; “The Vampyre”; Walpole, Horace.
Further Reading
Bloom, Clive, ed. 2007. Gothic Horror: A Guide for Students and Readers. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Browning, Robert. 1836. “The rain set early in to-night.” Sixty lines signed “Z,” in Monthly Repository, vol. x., N.S., 1836, pp. 43–44.
Browning, Robert. (1842). Bells and Pomegranates. No. III. – Dramatic Lyrics. London: Edward Moxon.
Bürger, August Gottfried. [1774] 1900. Lenore. Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Ellis and Elvey.
De Quincey, Thomas. 2006. On Murder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Duggett, Tom. 2010. Gothic Romanticism: Architecture, Politics, and Literary Form. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kendrick, Walter M. 1991. The Thrill of Fear: 250 Years of Scary Entertainment. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Poe, Edgar Allan. 1845. “The Raven.” American Review, February, 1:143–145.
Poe, Edgar Allan. 2008. The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Signet Classics.
Punter, David. 2014. “Gothic Poetry, 1700–1900.” In The Gothic World, edited by Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend, 210–220. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Andrew. 2013. Gothic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Wagner, Corinna, ed. 2014. Gothic Evolutions: Poetry, Tales, Context, Theory. Ontario: Broadview Press.
HORROR ANTHOLOGIES
An anthology is a collection of thematically linked works by different authors. (In the modern publishing industry, the term “collection” itself is used for books consisting of works by a single author.) The thematic linkages can be weak, and, importantly, the works do not have to be prose fiction but can include material from other forms of literature—verse, drama, essays, correspondence—as well as such other genres as music and theology. Anthologies have played a significant role in the history of horror literature and the establishment of a canon, helping to shape the field by shaping assumptions about which works are important to reprint, read, and remember.
Those wanting to establish horror as a many-rooted genre would do well to look at the depictions of horrific punishments and general bloodlust in the collections of Christian sermons and homiletics that were at one time popular. If one concentrates on fiction anthologies, it helps to remember that although short fiction predates the invention of movable type, the printing press, and even the Christian era, it was Christians’ development of the codex—the progenitor of the modern form of the book, created from separate pages bound together along one edge—that permitted different works by different authors to be cumulated into one binding. The earliest known anthologies would thus be manuscript collections, and arguably the earliest horror anthology is MS. Cotton Vitellius A XV, which dates from prior to 1631 and collects not only Beowulf, the earliest monster story in English, but Christian apocrypha such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, as well as containing numerous illustrations of monsters and the monstrous.
Despite such an auspicious beginning, and despite the appearance of horrific elements in the works of such widely read medieval authors as Geoffrey Chaucer, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Dante Alighieri, it was not until the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment that formal collections of thematically linked works began to be systematically published, although it must be emphasized that such literary genres as horror and fantasy did not then exist and are relatively recent in invention. One of the earliest print collections was the English writer Thomas Bromhall’s marvelously titled A Treatise of Specters, or, An History of Apparitions, Oracles, Prophecies, and Predictions with Dreams, Visions and Revelations and the Cunning Delusions of the Devil to Strengthen the Idolatry of the Gentiles and the Worshiping of Saints Departed, with the Doctrine of Purgatory: a Work very Seasonable for Discovering the Impostures and Religious Cheats of These Times, Collected out of Sundry Authors of Great Credit and Delivered into English from Their Several Originals by T.B. (1658). While hardly free from religious argumentation, Bromhall’s book nevertheless would have provided its susceptible readers with horrific chills. The eighteenth century likewise had such works as The History of Apparitions, Ghosts, Spirits or Spectres; Consisting of Variety of Remarkable Stories of Apparitions, Attested by People of Undoubted Veracity (1762), whose author is listed simply as “Clergyman.” However, perhaps the most significant work to emerge from this period was Daniel Defoe’s often anthologized and still occasionally read ghost story, A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal, the Next Day After Her Death, to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, the 8th of September, 1705 (1706)—a book that, despite its title, is fiction.
It was during the nineteenth century that anthologies of horrific literature—which is to say, literature deliberately written to a specific sensationalistic aesthetic—began to be consciously compiled. There was a contemporary awareness that this material was diff
erent in content and approach from other works, and editors recognized that such material could be cumulated and collected. Such a collection was the five volumes of the Gespensterbuch, edited by Johann August Apel and Friedrich August Schulze (as F. Laun) and published between 1811 and 1815. The title means Ghost Book, and it included not only works of Germanic folklore but also works of supernatural horror. This is an especially significant book in the history of horror anthologies, for in 1812 a selection of the tales was translated into French and published as Fantasmagoriana; ou Recueil d’Histoires d’Apparitions, de Spectres, Revenans, Fantômes, &c., after which a selection of these along with the introduction to the French volume were translated into English as Tales of the Dead (1813) by one Sarah Utterson. Her introduction is well informed, revealing a historical awareness of the literature of the horrific, and the French introduction recognizes the existence of horrific literature and provides an argument for its existence: “the wonderful ever excites a degree of interest, and gains an attentive ear; consequently, all recitals relative to supernatural appearances please us” (iv). Moreover, the French introduction provides bibliographic discussions of and references to those eighteenth-century works that discuss aspects of the supernatural. As if this were not significant enough for one small volume, Tales of the Dead was one of those books read by Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Percy and Mary Shelley during their legendary 1816 sojourn at Lake Geneva, and thus almost certainly helped inspire Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1819).
The lack of an international copyright meant that, for most of the nineteenth century, works could be published in England and Europe and almost immediately reprinted in America, and vice versa. This led to the first multivolume fantastic fiction anthology in English, the Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (1823; 3 volumes). Also having a thoroughly cosmopolitan set of contents were John Y. Akerman’s Tales of Other Days (1830) and Henry St. Clair’s Tales of Terror (1835). In addition to a number of anonymously translated European tales, the latter also included American writer William Austin, whose widely anthologized “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man” (1824) is an American utilization of the idea of the Flying Dutchman, a man cursed to travel forever, unable to recognize when he arrives at his destination, and horrifying by implication.
The nineteenth century saw numerous anthologies of horrific work, and there was no social stigma against authors, whether men and women, writing works that were fantastic and horrific. Reprints of anthologies, often with expanded contents, became more common. This was the case with Akerman, mentioned above, and it included such later works as A Stable for Nightmares, whose 1867 English edition contained twelve stories, only some of which were reprinted in an 1896 edition, which added new material. American writers began to vie for space with the English and Europeans; in Strange Happenings (1901), the American regionalist (a writer focusing on conveying the “local color” of a specific region of the United States) Hamlin Garland could rub shoulders with such male English writers as Grant Allen and W. Clark Russell and such women as Beatrice O’Connor, Mrs. Fleming, and Clara Savile-Clarke. The Victorian love of the supernatural led to such collections as Stories with a Vengeance (1883), which was also sold as the Bow Bells Annual for 1883. Similarly, individual magazines began to be mined for their fantastic contents: Strange Doings in Strange Places (1890) reprinted eighteen stories that had appeared in Cassell’s Sunday Journal during 1888.
The subject matter of the stories remained essentially static, however, and although there were significant stylistic differences, and individual authors such as Fitz-James O’Brien and J. S. Le Fanu could and did offer unique approaches, the material published in the early nineteenth century was essentially the same as the material published at its conclusion: stories of hauntings, punishments natural and supernatural, covenants with demons and devils, premature burials, and the ever-popular stories of adventures with vampires and werewolves. It was only in the 1920s and 1930s, with the advent of such magazines as Weird Tales in the United States, coupled with the prescience of English editors and the rivalries of various English newspaper chains, that the subject content of horrific anthologies began to be consciously expanded. English editor Christine Campbell Thomson began the trend with Not at Night (1925), which reprinted a number of stories that included several first published in Weird Tales. The series lasted for eleven volumes, concluding with Nightmare by Daylight (1936). The next year, 1937, saw the publication of The Not at Night Omnibus (1937), collecting thirty-five selected stories from the previous volumes. Starting in 1928, with Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery, and Horror (1928), Dorothy Sayers began editing a series of massive collections, whose title indicates its mix of genres. The horrific and fantastic writers included many of the finest writers then alive, and Sayers continued to edit similar anthologies until the early 1940s. H. R. Wakefield and Charles Birkin, editors at the publisher Philip Allan, began what is now popularly known as the Creeps series in 1932 with the publication of Creeps (1932), Shivers (1932), and Shudders (1932). Ultimately, some fourteen titles were published, with the contents either horrific or dark fantasy, and The Creeps Omnibus (1935) cumulated the contents of the first three volumes. (The latter contained seven stories by Wakefield.)
While the above were being published, the rival English newspaper chains began offering subscribers inexpensive sets of historically important writers and also massive subject-based anthologies that collected material old and new. Readers interested in the horrific could thus acquire, among many others, A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), A Century of Thrillers from Poe to Arlen (1934), The Mystery Book (1934), A Century of Thrillers: Second Series (1935), The Great Book of Thrillers (1935; revised, 1937), Century of Ghost Stories (1936), and A Century of Thrillers (1937, 3 vols.).
Although some of the above had American editions, anthologies of horror and the fantastic published originally in America were much less common during this period, though one of the more significant works was The Moon Terror (1927). Anonymously edited by Farnsworth Wright, who was then editing Weird Tales, The Moon Terror reprinted four stories published in the original Weird Tales and was offered as a subscription premium for new subscribers. It apparently did not attract many, but it is the first American fantastic anthology whose contents were derived completely from a genre magazine. During the 1940s, however, several events occurred roughly simultaneously. More anthologies began to be published, their contents derived from the genre magazines, and because most major publishers did not wish to commit themselves to publishing what they undoubtedly did not consider literature, these anthologies were published by the fans and the smaller publishers, who were more inclined to take risks. Perhaps the most notable of these was The Garden of Fear (1945), edited by William L. Crawford, consisting of five stories originally published in Marvel Tales, which was also owned and edited by Crawford. Forty-eight thousand copies were printed, and had this book received the newsstand distribution Crawford had been promised, horror anthologies might have been accorded more respect.
A Selective Timeline of Horror Anthologies
1813
Tales of the Dead, translated from the French by Sarah Utterson
1835
Tales of Terror, edited by Henry St. Clair
1867
A Stable for Nightmares, edited by John Y. Akerman
1883
Stories with a Vengeance
1925
Not at Night, edited by Christine Campbell Thomson (first of eleven volumes)
1927
The Moon Terror, edited (anonymously) by Farnsworth Wright
1928
Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery, and Horror, edited by Dorothy Sayers (first of a series)
1932
Creeps, Shivers, and Shudders (three separate volumes), edited by Charles Birkin
1944
Sleep No More, edited by August Derleth; Great Tales of Terror and the Supern
atural, edited by Herbert Wise and Phyllis Fraser
1945
The Garden of Fear, edited by William L. Crawford
1947
Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre (first anthology from Arkham House); The Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald Wollheim
1967
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
1973
Demon Kind, edited by Roger Elwood
1980
Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley
1983
Fantastic Tales, edited by Italo Calvino; Black Water, edited by Alberto Manguel
1987
The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell
1988
Prime Evil, edited by Douglas A. Winter
2011
The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
One of the few anthologies to be published by a major press was Sleep No More (1944), edited by August Derleth, a well-respected Wisconsin regionalist writer. Derleth, however, was also co-founder in 1939, with Donald Wandrei, of the publishing firm Arkham House. Originally intended to put into print the works of the recently deceased and much missed H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham House rapidly began to publish dark fantasies and weird science by such living writers as Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, and Derleth himself. Its first anthology was Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre (1947). Another anthology from a major press was Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944), edited by Herbert Wise and Phyllis Fraser, which collected fifty-two stories by such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, Algernon Blackwood, and Guy de Maupassant, as well as such contemporary mainstream writers as Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Sayers. Its publication as part of Random House’s Modern Library helped it to achieve, like Sayers’s anthologies mentioned above, the status of a genre- and canon-defining book.
