copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman
Genre fiction focuses upon the conveyance of one emotion. For science fiction, according to C. S. Lewis, the emotion is wonder, whereas, Edgar Allan Poe implies, horror fiction, as the genre’s name suggests, evokes horror. Why readers would want to be frightened out of their wits is taken up in another post, “Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear.” Other genres inspire other emotions, but this post is concerned simply with naming names--that is, with identifying authors who have written works of horror fiction. Many mined the mother lode of horror; others panned for the gold only once or twice. In every respect, though, each of the authors listed has written at least one satisfying poem, short story, novel, play, or motion picture that delves into fear, and, in this regard, may be considered a master of the macabre. When a writer has written many works in the genre, only his or her name is listed; when the author has written only one or two instances of the fiction of fear (or a truly seminal work* in the field), the title of the work is also listed. Some of the names on our roster are likely to surprise those for whom horror fiction is not one’s daily bread. We thought of listing the names chronologically, by sex, by the stature of the author’s literary reputation, by the volume of works that he or she wrote in the horror genre, and in various other ways, but decided, at last, upon an alphabetical listing.
- Adam, Richard, The Girl in a Swing
- Andrews, V. C.
- Anson, Jay, The Amityville Horror
- Barker, Clive
- Beaumont, Charles
- Benchley, Peter, Jaws
- Bierce, Ambrose
- Blackwood, Algernon
William Peter Blatty
- Blatty, William Peter, The Exorcist (seminal)
- Bloch, Robert, Psycho (seminal)
Robert Bloch
- Bradbury, Ray, Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Brandner, Gary, The Howling
- Brite, Poppy Z.
- Browning, Robert
- Campbell, Ramsey
- Clark, Mary Higgins
- Clegg, Douglas
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel (seminal)
- Dante, Alighieri, The Inferno
- De Felitta, Frank, Audrey Rose
- Dickens, Charles, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, “The Signalman”
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
- Du Maurier, Daphne, The Birds (seminal)
- Duncan, Lois, I Know What You Did Last Summer
- Eddy, Jr., C. M.
- Ehrlich, Max, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud
- Faulkner, William, “A Rose for Emily”
- Farris, John
- Finney, Jack, Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Fowles, John, The Collector
- Gilbert, Stephen
- Golding, William, Lord of the Flies
Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel (seminal)
- Irving, Washington, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
- Jackson, Shirley, The Haunting of Hill House (seminal), “The Lottery”
- Jacobs, W. W., “The Monkey’s Paw”
- James, Henry, “The Turn of the Screw”
- James, M. R.
- Kafka, Franz, The Metamorphosis
- Keene, Brian
Stephen King
- King, Stephen (seminal)
- Koontz, Dean (seminal)
- Laimo, Michael
- Le Fanu, Sheridan
- Levin, Ira, Rosemary’s Baby (seminal)
- Ligotti, Thomas
- Little, Bentley
- Lovecraft, H. P. (seminal)
- Machen, Arthur
- Marasco, Robert, Burnt Offerings
- Matheson, Richard
- McCammon, Robert
- Milton, John, Paradise Lost
- Oates, Joyce Carol
Flannery O'Connor
- O’Connor, Flannery (seminal)
- Onion, Oliver, “The Beckoning Fair One”
- Peck, Richard, Are You Alone in the House?
- Peretti, Frank E. (seminal)
- Perkins, Charlotte, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
- Pike, Christopher
Edgar Allan Poe
- Poe, Edgar Allan, Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque (seminal)
- Polidori, John William, The Vampyre
- Preston, Douglas and Lincoln Child
- Price, E. Hoffman
- Quinn, Seabury
- Radcliffe, Ann, The Mysteries of Udolpho
- Rice, Anne
- Rollins, James
- Saul, John
- Shakespeare, William, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet (seminal)
- Shan, Darren
Mary Shelley
- Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (seminal)
- Simmons, Dan
- Smith, Clark Ashton
Robert Louis Stevenson
- Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (seminal)
- Stine, R. L.
Bram Stoker
- Stoker, Bram, Dracula (seminal)
- Straub, Peter
- Tem, Steve and Melanie
- Tryon, Thomas
- Twain, Mark, “A Ghost Story” (seminal)
- Van Vogt, A. E., “The Black Destroyer”
- Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust
- Wakefield, H. Russell
- Wallace, Edgar, King Kong (seminal)
- Walpole, Horace, The Castle or Otranto (seminal)
H. G. Wells
- Wells, H. G. (seminal)
- Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray (seminal)
- Wilson, Colin
- Wordsworth, William, the “Lucy” poems
- Wyndham, John, The Village of the Damned (seminal)
* Although what one considers to be a "seminal work" is apt to be controversial, the term as it is used in this post is attributed to literary works that have had a lasting importance upon the horror genre or that proved innovative in having established a new direction for succeeding works in the same genre or in expanding its subject matter.
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