authors – Page 17 – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

Notes on “I am Legend”

Cover of First Edition, 1954(Please note that this cover is protected by copyright; please refer to Wikipedia for details on permissible use) — Cover of First Edition, 1954
(Please note that this cover is protected by copyright; please refer to Wikipedia for details on permissible use)

I have been reading Richard Matheson’s I am Legend recently whenever I have the opportunity. I would not say it is a fascinating book, but it is interesting. One particularly interesting aspect is that the book is not just about one man’s fight against zombies (which he terms “vampires”, but which fit better into the modern concept of zombies) , but that it also deals extensively with his fight against depression and loneliness in a post-apocalyptic future. Today, I happened to look up the work on Wikipedia and found the following interesting review written by Dan Schneider of International Writers Magazine: Book Review n 2005:

“…despite having vampires in it, [the novel] is not a novel on vampires, nor even a horror nor sci-fi novel at all, in the deepest sense. Instead, it is perhaps the greatest novel written on human loneliness. It far surpasses Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in that regard. Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre, and is all the more surprising because, having read his short stories – which range from competent but simplistic, to having classic Twilight Zone twists (he was a major contributor to the original TV series) there is nothing within those short stories that suggests the supreme majesty of the existential masterpiece I Am Legend was aborning.”

Mr. Schneider may very well be right that it may be the greatest novel written on human loneliness. If it is not, it is very close to the top. I have read Robinson Crusoe and my impression is that I am Legend surpasses that in describing the mental and emotional anguish of loneliness and bringing that inner struggle home to the modern reader.

In my view, one reason I am Legend is important to the horror genre, is because it shows another aspect of horror: personal, inner anguish and turmoil, which probably should be classified as a form of horror, if no one has done so yet. Anyone who has suffered extreme inner turmoil would probably agree that it is worthy of being termed horror. It may even be the most common form of real-life horror. I do not know the statistics for how many people are tortured at the hands of serial killers or executioners or other true-to-life monsters, but I would guess that it is far less than the number of people experiencing extreme negative emotions without actually having been physically tormented.

This aspect of inner horror can add another dimension to the otherwise average horror novel or movie, which, based on what I have seen, tends to emphasize physical violence or the threat of physical violence. In those works, the inner horror of the protagonists is usually assumed, but not examined in detail. Examining the inner emotions of protagonists and antagonists will help form empathy and sympathy for the characters within readers, particularly in those who have experienced a similar emotion, and will help form a tighter emotional connection between work and audience.

I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on I am Legend. It is quite fascinating. However, do not do as I have done and read it before completing the book. You will only spoil the ending for yourself.

Thoughts? Comments?

Slattery’s Tao of Writing, Part 3: Talking About Dogs

Painting of a Dog by Kim Duryang Sapsalgae, 1743 — Painting of a Dog
by Kim Duryang Sapsalgae, 1743

Some time back I was writing a story, thinking about how to be more mysterious in my writing, how to be less direct, yet provide more details in my narrative, when it occurred to me that (probably because I am a “dog person”) writing is often like talking about a dog without saying that you are talking about a dog.

Often, I have an idea or a feeling that I want to express, but if I try to express it directly and concisely, the reader will probably not apprehend the nuances I see in the idea. At the same time, much of the enjoyment in reading is trying to perceive the meaning behind the author’s words while experiencing the world of the work’s narrator vicariously. Therefore, as a writer, I want to get my ideas across without being so direct that the reader loses much of the fun of reading. For example, look at the first chapter of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway was known for his lean, muscular style, so you know he isn’t going to use any more words than necessary to express his ideas.

In the first chapter, he describes soldiers marching off to the front over the course of several months as he views them from a nearby house. As he watches the soldiers, the leaves fall from the trees, the vineyards dry up, the mountains turn brown and bare, and the dust the soldiers kick up turn everything bare and white–the color of bone. All these hint at death. Hemingway could have said simply, “Frederic Henry [the main character] watched the soldiers march off to their deaths”, but the reader would have lost the experience of living that time with Frederic and he would have lost sharing Frederic’s experience of witnessing an event and puzzling out its greater meaning for himself. All the artistic beauty of that chapter would have been lost.

I recall reading somewhere several years ago this idea described as the principle of contraction and expansion. That is no doubt true. Yet, to describe it so unemotionally as “contraction and expansion” seems aesthetically too clinical, too sterile, too confining a term for an idea concerning the breadth and depth of literary intellectual and emotional perception.

I think I prefer to think of this idea in terms of a dog, a living, breathing being full of warmth, love, loyalty, joy, anger, fear, tenderness, intelligence, stupidity, pain, and all the other abstract qualities sentient creatures have. Yes, I can simply say “dog” and hope my readers see all the nuances of a dog’s existence that I do, but they might not and I would be depriving them of the experience of sharing my perception and all the intimated nuances and emotions that come with it. So sometimes it is best just to describe the nuances of a dog’s life and let my readers enjoy drawing their own conclusions and along with these conclusions enjoy the subsequent discussions and debates among them as to who was right, who was wrong, who knew what he was talking about, who did not, and so on.

There are times when it is necessary to be concise, to pick a single word you hope is as pregnant with meaning for the reader as it is for you, but those times must be balanced against the times when the reader needs to experience an event and all its nuances. The writer, as artist, must decide how to balance out those moments. The writer strives to achieve a balance of ideas and perceptions. Balance is part of the art of writing. Balance is part of the Tao of writing.

Sometimes it is best to simply say “dog.” At other times it is best to talk about a dog without actually saying that you are talking about a dog.

Thoughts? Comments?

More on ETA Hoffmann

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann1776-1822 — Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
1776-1822

I am up late tonight and thought I would just throw together a few additional tidbits on one of the earliest masters of horror: ETA Hoffman.

Here is an interesting paragraph from The Literary Gothic:

24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822

You know the “Nutcracker” ballet, the one that every local ballet troupe is obligated to perform at Christmas? This isn’t the guy — Tchaikovsky wrote that music in the 1890s, using the translation by Alexander Dumas (pere) rather than Hoffmann’s original. But Hoffmann wrote the short story that lies behind it, and it’s a short story that’s very unlike the charmingly sentimental puffery that little kids get dragged to every December. Very unlike… Hoffmann, a brilliant music critic and respectable composer as well as writer, is one of the major figures of German Romanticism, and a powerful and disturbing writer — and disturbed, according to many; Sir Walter Scott, in his extended discussion of Hoffmann and literary supernaturalism, concludes that Hoffmann needs medical attention more than he needs literary criticism, and no less a student of dysfunctional minds (which I guess is just about everyone’s) than Sigmund Freud made Hoffman’s “The Sandman” the center of his essay on “The Uncanny.” Hoffmann, although strongly influenced by Gothic literature, is probably best regarded as a fantasist rather than a “Gothic” or “horror” writer, although Freud’s term is perhaps the most apt.

This link leads to a rather lengthy article on Hoffmann and German Romanticism at theliterarylink.com. I haven’t read it yet, but to a fan of German literature like myself, it looks fascinating. I hope to find time to read it soon.

Here is a link to the text of “The Sandman“, one’s of Hoffmann’s most famous works. Litgothic.com says about it:

“The classic — and widely anthologized — tale of a boy and his automaton — and, according to Freud, who discusses this work in his essay “The Uncanny,” castration anxiety. Automata, by the way, were a happening phenomenon in the C19 — check out Edgar Allan Poe‘s “Maelzel’s Chess Player” and Hoffmann’s own “Automata” for other Gothic-tradition examples; for a general discussion of automata, check out The Automata Gallery or this History of Automata.”

Here is a link to the goodreads.com article on Hoffmann. And from there here are two interesting quotes from Hoffmann:

“Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?” ETA Hoffmann

“There are… otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, Die Serapions Brüder: Gesammelte Erzählungen Und Märchen In Vier Bänden

Another link to another lengthy article on Hoffmann, but this one deals with Hoffmann’s treatment of “the uncanny”.

Another interesting summary of Hoffmann’s talent, this one from nndb.com:

“Hoffmann is one of the master novelists of the Romantic movement in Germany. He combined with a humor that reminds us of Jean Paul the warm sympathy for the artist’s standpoint towards life, which was enunciated by early Romantic leaders like Tieck and Wackenroder; but he was superior to all in the almost clairvoyant powers of his imagination. His works abound in grotesque and gruesome scenes — in this respect they mark a descent from the high ideals of the Romantic school; the gruesome was only one outlet for Hoffmann’s genius, and even here the secret of his power lay not in his choice of subjects, but in the wonderfully vivid and realistic presentation of them. Every line he wrote leaves the impression behind it that it expresses something felt or experienced; every scene, vision or character he described seems to have been real and living to him. It is this realism, in the best sense of the word, that made him the great artist he was, and gave him so extraordinary a power over his contemporaries.”

That’s it for tonight. I am off to the land of dreams.

Beyond the Veil of Reality

Face of Horror Houseby Horror House — Face of Horror House
by Horror House

Last night, I watched an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House” on the Masters of Horror series (season 1, episode 2) on Netflix . Afterwards, being late and time for bed, instead of finding the story on Project Gutenberg or some other cost-free source so that I could read it firsthand, I read a summary of the story on Wikipedia to see if the adaptation was at least reasonably accurate. It seemed to be, even though the story was set in the modern day and the ending varied significantly from the original. But, in accordance with today’s tastes, it was rather bloody and cruel in ways I am sure Lovecraft never intended (I say this after having read a considerable amount of his most famous works).

The most interesting aspect of the story to me was not the story itself, but speculating on how Lovecraft came up with the story’s concept.

I understand from the Wikipedia article that Lovecraft had recently attended a lecture and read up somewhat on non-Euclidean space. Apparently, he was intrigued with the idea of existence on different planes. Somehow he came up with the idea that the different planes of existence might intersect and beings would be able to move from one plane to the next. This is the concept that the protagonist of the story, Walter Gilman (a graduate student in Physics) is studying when he moves into the Witch house, which was a boarding house in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, but three hundred years ago was the residence of a witch. Gilman, as I interpret the TV story, notices that the corner formed by the intersection of two walls and the ceiling in his room coincides with the intersection of three dimensions. It is this intersection that the witch who previously resided in the house and her familiar (a really nasty creature combining a rat with the face of a man) uses to re-enter the house in the modern day and create havoc for Gilman and the other residents. I won’t give away the ending, but it is a good story and probably one of the more reasonably accurate adaptations of a Lovecraft story that you are likely to find.

What I found most interesting was speculating if how Lovecraft came up with the story was to be looking at the intersection of three walls in his house and wonder if different planes of existence could intersect like that and, if they could, could creatures use the intersection to move from one plane to the other? I am always fascinated by how writers come up with ideas for their works. Did you ever wonder what spurred Richard Matheson to write I am Legend or Stephen King to write Carrie?

I know that some authors of Horror (such as Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, and Arthur Machen) were intrigued by the idea of a plane of existence beyond what we take for reality, that what we perceive as reality may actually just mask the true reality. Apparently, Lovecraft was thus intrigued as well and used his ideas of a possible alternative reality as the foundation for what others would later term “the Cthulhu Mythos”.

After having contemplated this since last night, I have been asking myself, what did these intelligent men see in their interpretations of the everyday world that would lead them to believe in the possible existence of an alternative reality? Based upon my experience with humanity, I have come to realize that some people have some downright bizarre concepts of the world around them, but how did these concepts originate? What causes their perceptions to be so radically different from mine? Is it a matter of genetics that causes their synapses to be linked together differently? Do they have slightly different body chemistries influencing their thoughts? Is it that they simply encountered different views of the world as they grew up? Is there a reality that they can perceive but I cannot–in the same way as I can see the workings of God in everything about me, but others do not and thus call themselves atheists and agnostics?

What are your thoughts?

Edward Lucas White

If you have never heard of Edward Lucas White (as I had not until recently), do yourself a favor and look up his short story “Lukundoo” (1925). This is probably one of the best and most terrifying horror stories I have ever read and it is the story for which White is best known. Probably his next best known story is “The House of Nightmare” (1906), though it is not nearly as good as ‘Luknudoo” and by today’s standards of horror would be considered more of a quaint tale told by children around a campfire than true horror. Nonetheless, Lovecraft considered White to be one of the masters of “weird fiction” and mentions him in his treatise “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”

One interesting aspect of White is that he based at least some of his stories on his nightmares, which is not uncommon among horror authors, but after reading “Lukundoo” I had to ask myself, “what was going on in this guy’s psyche?”

Do you base any of your works on dreams or nightmares? Write in and let us know.

Fascinating Habits of Writers of Horror

Some writers have interesting habits.

I have always found one of the most interesting aspects of studying the lives of famous writers to be the personal habits they have while writing. The habits show the writer’s personal side and perhaps give an insight into how their creativity is ingrained in their natures. Following are some examples of the better known habits of mainstream authors (the few examples I have collected of “horror habits” follow these).

Hemingway said that he, at least in his Paris years, wrote for four hours each day before going to work at the Kansas City Star office, he wrote using pencils and a spiral bound notebook, and he started each days writing by sharpening twenty pencis.

F. Scott Fitzgerald never rewrote anything less than nine times.

Thomas Mann was very disciplined and rose and dressed in a suit each day as if he were going to work at a bank (even though he was going only so far as his living room), started each day at the same time (I think 8:00 a.m.), wrote for four hours, broke for lunch for an hour, wrote for another four hours, and then ended his day, by going back to his bedroom and taking off his suit.

Hunter Thompson and Henry Miller were at the opposite end of the discipline scale and might write for days, then not write again for days or weeks, before going on another binge of writing. Thompson might write some lines on a napkin while having lunch at a restaurant, then take the napkin and force it through a fax to get the work to his editors at Rolling Stone.

Here are the tidbits on writing habits by authors of horror.

Thomas Cotterill, another WordPress member, wrote this interesting article on the habits of Stephen King. I have read elsewhere that Stephen King normally writes a first draft, which he runs past his wife, Tabitha, makes some changes and then sends it out to friends for their inputs, and then writes a final draft, which he sends to the publisher.

I have yet to find anything detailed about Poe’s habits, but I did find this general description on the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

“Edgar A. Poe, one of the Editors of the Broadway Journal. He never rests. There is a small steam-engine in his brain, which not only sets the cerebral mass in motion, but keeps the owner in hot water. His face is a fine one, and well gifted with intellectual beauty. Ideality, with the power of analysis, is shown in his very broad, high and massive forehead — a forehead which would have delighted Gall beyond measure. He would have have [[sic]] made a capital lawyer — not a very good advocate, perhaps, but a famous unraveller of all subtleties. He can thread his way through a labyrinth of absurdities, and pick out the sound thread of sense from the tangled skein with which it is connected. He means to be candid, and labours under the strange hallucination that he is so; but he has strong prejudices, and, without the least intention of irreverence, would wage war with the Deity, if the divine canons militated against his notions. His sarcasm is subtle and searching. He can do nothing in the common way; and buttons his coat after a fashion peculiarly his own. If we ever caught him doing a thing like any body else, or found him reading a book any other way than upside down, we should implore his friends to send for a straitjacket, and a Bedlam doctor. He were mad, then, to a certtainty.” — (Thomas Dunn English, “Notes About Men of Note,” The Aristidean, April 1845, p. 153. At this time, Poe and English were still friends, and the tone of this item is happy and jocular. In reviewing this issue of the Aristidean in his own Broadway Journal, for May 3, 1845, Poe comments “. . . the ‘Notes about Men of Note’ are amusing” (BJ, 1845, p. 285, col. 1).)

Dean Koontz says this about his own writing habits on his website:

“I work 10- and 11-hour days because in long sessions I fall away more completely into story and characters than I would in, say, a six-hour day. On good days, I might wind up with five or six pages of finished work; on bad days, a third of a page. Even five or six is not a high rate of production for a 10- or 11-hour day, but there are more good days than bad. And the secret is doing it day after day, committing to it and avoiding distractions. A month–perhaps 22 to 25 work days–goes by and, as a slow drip of water can fill a huge cauldron in a month, so you discover that you have 75 polished pages. The process is slow, but that’s a good thing. Because I don’t do a quick first draft and then revise it, I have plenty of time to let the subconscious work; therefore, I am led to surprise after surprise that enriches story and deepens character. I have a low boredom threshold, and in part I suspect I fell into this method of working in order to keep myself mystified about the direction of the piece–and therefore entertained. A very long novel, like FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE can take a year. A book like THE GOOD GUY, six months.”

Here is an interesting interview by M.R. Hunter with Richard Matheson in Lastheplace.com. Apparently, Mr. Matheson does not have a computer, but writes everything in longhand and then has it typed up.

I have yet to find anything on Lovecraft’s writing habits, but here is a link to HPLovecraft.com that details his personal interests including his unusual dietary habits.

Lord Dunsany had the most eccentric habits of which I have heard. The Wikipedia article on Lord Dunsany states:

“Dunsany’s writing habits were considered peculiar by some. Lady Beatrice said that “He always sat on a crumpled old hat while composing his tales.” (The hat was eventually stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany almost never rewrote anything; everything he ever published was a first draft.^[7] Much of his work was penned with quill pens, which he made himself; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings, and would help type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany would sometimes conceive stories while hunting, and would return to the Castle and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper.^{[citation needed]”}

If you know of a source for information on the work habits of one or more horror writers, please share it. If you are searching for a topic of an article to write, I would like to suggest writing on the work habits (or interests) of horror writers. It would be fascinating to see if there is a common thread among them or if they vary from the habits of mainstream authors. For example, I have found out that Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and Bram Stoker were members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Anyway, I am now officially rambling.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, please share them.

Who influenced Edgar Allan Poe?

Over the last couple of hours I have been wandering the Internet, searching for interesting tidbits about writers of horror to post on my blog. I have been noting how Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James and a host of others influenced Lovecraft, who in turn influenced Stephen King along with generations of writers and film producers, and how Poe influenced them all. Of course, the next question that came to me was “who influenced Poe?”

I did a quick, cursory search of the Internet and found no good answer. A few speculated that he was influenced by the events of his life (duh, aren’t we all?), while a few others speculated that he was influenced by other prominent authors of his time (again: duh, aren’t we all). No one I found yet seems to be able to cite Poe’s influences like they can of Lovecraft, King, or others.

Does anyone know of a reliable source that cites the authors that Poe read?

Addendum:

(February 17, 2013) Here is the beginning of an answer to my question. Follow this link to the article “The Influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe” by Palmer Cobb, in Volume III of Studies in Philology, The University Press, Chapel Hill, 1908.

Algernon Blackwood

Illustration by Ianus

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was a prolific writer and is probably one of the forgotten masters of the horror genre. He was a favorite of H.P. Lovecraft as the three quotes below (from www.hplovecraft.com) illustrate:

“Aside from Poe, I think Algernon Blackwood touches me most closely—& this in spite of the oceans of unrelieved puerility which he so frequently pours forth. I am dogmatic enough to call The Willows the finest weird story I have ever read, & I find in the Incredible Adventures & John Silence material a serious & sympathetic understanding of the human illusion-weaving process which makes Blackwood rate far higher as a creative artist than many another craftsman of mountainously superior word-mastery & general technical ability…” (to Vincent Starrett, 6 December 1927)

“He actually analyses and reproduces faithfully the details of the persistent human illusion of—and out-reaching toward—a misty world of vari-coloured wonders, transcended natural laws, limitless possibilities, delighted discoveries, and ceaseless adventurous expentancy…. Of all Blackwood’s voluminous output, only a golden minimum represents him at his best—but that is such a marvellous best that we can well forgive him all his slush and prattle. It is my firm opinion that his longish short story The Willows is the greatest weird tale ever written. (with Machen’s The White People as a good second.) Little is said—everything is suggested!” (to Fritz Leiber, 9 November 1936)

“It is safe to say that Blackwood is the greatest living weirdist despite unevenness and a poor prose style.” (to Willis Conover, 10 January 1937)

Blackwood pursued a variety of jobs and careers during his lifetime, but based on the current Wikipedia article about him, his two main passions seem to have been writing and mysticism. According to this article, Blackwood once wrote to Peter Penzoldt:

“My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness. … Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary powers etc., and the word “supernatural” seems the best word for treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A “change” in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know.”

His two best known stories are The Willows and The Wendigo. I have not read The Wendigo yet, but I started The Willows two days ago and am into Chapter II currently. So far, it is very well written with a beautiful description of a canoe trip down the Danube. Towards the end of Chapter I, Blackwood begins to slowly bring out some eerie aspects of an island on which the narrator and his Swedish traveling companion have pitched camp for the night. With the beginning of Chapter II, the supernatural element begins to build ominously in a way that somehow reminds me of Mussorgsky’s symphony “Night on Bald Mountain”. If you are familiar with Mussorgsky’s opus, you know how I suspect the story will develop. I look forward to finishing The Willows as soon as possible and beginning The Wendigo shortly thereafter.

Thoughts? Comments?

ETA Hoffmann

Unless you are a literature/horror aficinado, you may never have heard of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, a German writer from the late 18th century. He predated Poe by almost half a century and in his time was probably as well known then as Stephen King and Clive Barker are today. His stories were considered terrifying in his time. Several of his stories were the basis for the well-known opera by Jacques Offenbach “Tales of Hoffmann”. If you have never heard the music from this, it would be worthwhile to listen for it or to buy a CD of it. It is very impressive. As with the photo of Stoker, I obtained this image from Wikimedia Commons, where it is listed as being in the public domain.

Whose skill with grammar do you admire most?

Most writers think of modeling their style after that of a famous writer. A large part of any writer’s style is his use of grammar. For example, Hemingway’s lean, muscular, sparse, style is well-known. His use of punctuation (which I am including under grammar) is also spare, using and where most writers would use commas in a rhetorical technique known as syndeton. Whereas Hemingway’s minimalist approach is masterful, somewhere in the middle of the scale is Mario Puzo (The Godfather) whose mediocre grammar skills often show up in comma splices and dangling prepositions. The writer I consider a master of both style and grammar is F.Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby).

My question to you is: whom do you consider to be a master grammarian/stylist?

The Unrecognized Masters of Horror

If they tried really hard, the majority of the public could perhaps name only four writers of horror: Stephen King, H.P.Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Clive Barker. Fans of the horror genre could doubtlessly name many more with the number of the authors they could name reflecting the intensity of their interest. For example, a person who can name fifteen authors of horror most likely has a more intense interest in the genre than someone who can name only five.

I would say that it is a safe bet that one or more of these authors are the topics in least 75% of all the conversations about horror literature going on at any one moment. While we amateurs can improve our skills from studying these four, I think we have a lot to learn from studying authors other than these four.

I recently read a compilation of stories that Lovecraft cites in his work “Supernatural Horror in Literature”. Of course, only Poe appears among his cited predecessors. Most of his influences are writers probably most of the modern public has never heard of (Lord Dunsany, Edward Lucas White, Arthur Machen, etc.) though they were as well known in their time as Dean Koontz and Peter Straub are today.

My question to you is: who are the unrecognized masters of horror that the modern public should know but in all likelihood do not? Whose name does not usually make it into any top ten list of masters of horror but should?