Classical Horror

[DavidAllred]

So I've re-read Frankenstein recently, and I want to pick up a read the original Jeckyll / Hyde, for some reason I never read this book. Can anyone recommend some classic horror pieces that were really good. Nothing to recent... I'm looking for things that have stood the test of time, say over a 100 years old.

[Shisho]

So I've re-read Frankenstein recently, and I want to pick up a read the original Jeckyll / Hyde, for some reason I never read this book. Can anyone recommend some classic horror pieces that were really good. Nothing to recent... I'm looking for things that have stood the test of time, say over a 100 years old.

You could also go with the black and white horror movie classics. You've knocked out Frankenstein, why not Dracula too? I like Frankenstein better, though.

Also, try some of Edgar Allen Poe's stories. The Black Cat is pretty good, as is Masque of the Red Death. Those are the first two I can name off the top of my head, but of course, they're all pretty good. I was watching something on Poe the other day, and it made mention of how "The Raven" scared people silly when it was published. Apparently it was The Exorcist of its day. That's so cute.

Lovecraft is pretty hit-or-miss with me. When he's good, he's really good. Sometimes he's just too damn wordy though. (Okay, I get it, the place was spooky for cryin' out loud.)

The good thing about the old school horror is that you can read a lot of it for free through Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page?fb_page_id=6195089915&).

[Gothos]

Going roughly a 100 years back, I think the main thing you're going to find are either short stories or some of the Gothic novels, like CASTLE OF OTRANTO and THE ITALIAN. I've read the former novel, which is entertainingly loopy and which does, unlike most Gothics, have a real supernatural horror in it.

There's also Matthew Lewis' THE MONK, which the author wrote at the tender age of 20-something, and which attained a scandalous celebrity. It's pretty good too.

In short stories, ETA Hoffman's "The Sandman" is an acknowledged classic. Both MR James and Algernon Blackwood wrote a lot of good short spooky stories that should be obtainable through Amazon or similar sources.

Conan Doyle also wrote a healthy smattering of scary tales, and I've seen one book collection of them, tho I don't know how easy that is to find.

[JeffreyWKramer]

While not as great a novel as FRANKENSTEIN, Stoker's DRACULA is nonetheless an excellent book, and highly recommended.

Many of Poe's short stories are, of course, pretty much the definition of "classical horror."

In addition to the gothic horror classics Gothos mentions (THE MONK is my favorite among that bunch), you might like the later gothic horror if Henry James' THE TURN OF THE SCREW.

[MPagar]

I remember enjoying Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. As others before me said, Stoker's Dracula was also an excellent read. Held up well for a book written over a century ago.

[Tobias March]

You could also go with the black and white horror movie classics. You've knocked out Frankenstein, why not Dracula too? I like Frankenstein better, though.

Also, try some of Edgar Allen Poe's stories. The Black Cat is pretty good, as is Masque of the Red Death. Those are the first two I can name off the top of my head, but of course, they're all pretty good. I was watching something on Poe the other day, and it made mention of how "The Raven" scared people silly when it was published. Apparently it was The Exorcist of its day. That's so cute.

Lovecraft is pretty hit-or-miss with me. When he's good, he's really good. Sometimes he's just too damn wordy though. (Okay, I get it, the place was spooky for cryin' out loud.)

The good thing about the old school horror is that you can read a lot of it for free through Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page?fb_page_id=6195089915&).

I love this thread.

Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood are good picks.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe was a notable influence on Lovecraft. Fantastic novel.

I also have a huge affection for House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, the son of a clergyman who spent a lot of his childhood in Ireland. It's Anglo-Irish Gothic, love it.

More recent, but nonetheless excellent, Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin. Think Mark Twain but with vampires.

Sheridan Le Fanu's Camilla also (another Irish vampire writer.....he wasn't a vampire though, he wrote about vampires...yess.....)

[Major Comma]

I go back to the film classics Too .
I loved Lon Chaneys Wolfman.

[Tobias March]

I go back to the film classics Too .
I loved Lon Chaneys Wolfman.

Hey James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. Top stuff :smile:

[Alan Lynch]

While not as great a novel as FRANKENSTEIN, Stoker's DRACULA is nonetheless an excellent book, and highly recommended.
I'd go the other way myself. Dracula is one of my alltime favourites.

Read The Phantom of the Opera too. It's fabulous, and I could cry that most people associate it with a musical.

[the4thpip]

I'd go the other way myself. Dracula is one of my alltime favourites.

Read The Phantom of the Opera too. It's fabulous, and I could cry that most people associate it with a musical.

I was gonna name the Phantom. Are the English translations good?

[jesse_custer]

Dracula is superior to Frankenstein from my standpoint, mainly for its dynamic narrative.

I echo all the Poe suggestions but also recommend the claustrophobic "The Pit and the Pendulum," the viciously mad "The Bells," the tragic "The Conqueror Worm," and the two funniest horror stories he wrote, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" and "A Predicament."

Finally, if you're looking for something even older, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem "The Erlking" is fantastic:

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;
'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,--
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.

[DavidAllred]

Read The Phantom of the Opera too. It's fabulous, and I could cry that most people associate it with a musical.

Great recommendation. I actually loved the musical, so I bet the book is great.

[Gothos]

You might check your library/bookstore for a copy of HP Lovecraft's SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE, which is a slim, concise overview of the history of horror fiction. It covers most of the major writers though I think he forgot DRACULA. He had no use for the Gothic writers and deliberately left them out, but there's a lot of good recommendations there.

[JeffreyWKramer]

It covers most of the major writers though I think he forgot DRACULA. He had no use for the Gothic writers and deliberately left them out, but there's a lot of good recommendations there.

The first sentence quoted above is probably not correct. I don't think Lovecraft "forgot" DRACULA; I think he intentionally omitted it because, though it is more a modern than a gothic horror novel, it shared certain stylistic elements with gothic horror, and thus was not to Lovecraft's tastes, as you correctly state in the second sentence, above.

[mcgaffer]

William Beckford's Vathek.
The Fantasmagoriana, the first collection of ghost stories from about 1815.
John William Polidori, The Vampyre. This is sometimes falsely attributed to Lord Byron.

[Gothos]

The first sentence quoted above is probably not correct. I don't think Lovecraft "forgot" DRACULA; I think he intentionally omitted it because, though it is more a modern than a gothic horror novel, it shared certain stylistic elements with gothic horror, and thus was not to Lovecraft's tastes, as you correctly state in the second sentence, above.

Well, I said "I think" because I remembered an excerpt from one of Lovecraft's letters where he told his correspondent, "I can't believe I forgot so-and-so/such-and-such" in SHiL. So I checked a couple of online reviews and noticed that he does at least mention DRACULA,so it wasn't that. It may have been a writer rather than a work, since one reviewer does say that HPL left out a significant horror-scribe named Oliver Onians, but my memory of the letter-excerpt was that HPL mentioned leaving out a work, and I recall thinking, "Yeah, how do you do a history of horror and leave out ____?"

None of which detracts from the good reputation of SHiL as a damn good reference-book-- though one reviewer points out (as I did forget) that you may have to pass over some of HPL's "racial theories of literature" to get to the good stuff.

[berk]

William Beckford's Vathek.
The Fantasmagoriana, the first collection of ghost stories from about 1815.
John William Polidori, The Vampyre. This is sometimes falsely attributed to Lord Byron.Great suggestions. I haven't read the Fantasmagoriana yet, but bought it a couple months ago after finding out that it was the book that inspired Byron, the Shelleys and Polidori to have their famous ghost story writing contest, which led of course to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I've read Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, and recommend both. Anyone interested in the development of the genre has to try at least one Radcliffe, just because she was so important to its popularization and her books are good reads in themselves. Unfortunately, she does tend to explain away any supernatural elements, but her villains (e.g. Montoni in MoU) are very well drawn and helped introduce a new character type to English lit, and she's great at building an atmosphere of mystery and tension.

I also second Matthew Lewis's The Monk. Really outrageous book, in the context of its era.

Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Maturin is another good one.

Too bad this thread never came up about a year from now, because I have a lot of stuff of this kind lined up to read over the next several months, mostly from the late 18th through the 19th centuries.

[berk]

William Beckford's Vathek.
The Fantasmagoriana, the first collection of ghost stories from about 1815.
John William Polidori, The Vampyre. This is sometimes falsely attributed to Lord Byron.Great suggestions. I haven't read the Fantasmagoriana yet, but bought it a couple months ago after finding out that it was the book that inspired Byron, the Shelleys and Polidori to have their famous ghost story writing contest, which led of course to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I've read Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, and recommend both. Anyone interested in the development of the genre has to try at least one Radcliffe, just because she was so important to its popularization and her books are good reads in themselves. Unfortunately, she does tend to explain away any supernatural elements, but her villains (e.g. Montoni in MoU) are very well drawn and helped introduce a new character type to English lit, and she's great at building an atmosphere of mystery and tension.

I also second Matthew Lewis's The Monk. Really outrageous book, in the context of its era.

Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Maturin is another good one.

Too bad this thread never came up about a year from now, because I have a lot of stuff of this kind lined up to read over the next several months, mostly from the late 18th through the 19th centuries.

[Grazzt]

Let's not forget Henry James' Turn of the Screw and the ghost stories of Edith Wharton and Charles Dickens.

[DocAbsurd]

House of Seven Gables. Great ghost story by Hawthorne.

Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.

Find a copy of Twain's original draft for Mysterious Stranger.

Jekyll and Hyde remains one of my favorite monster stories.

Don't forget Lair of the White Worm if you're gonna read Dracula.

I still consider Phantom of the Opera a better detective story than an out-and-out monster tale.

Picture of Dorian Gray is creepy as all hell. I'm also trying to find a copy of Wilde's Canterville Ghost.

[jesse_custer]

House of Seven Gables. Great ghost story by Hawthorne.

I really wanted to like this. I'm a big admirer of his short stories, but this novel was overtly descriptive for me.

[DrewEdwards]

The Invisible Man is seriously underrated. Just a great, quick, read. And Griffin is a wonderfully creepy character. A lot of the film versions forget that he's seriously demented. Only the Whale film got that right really.

[jesse_custer]

You're right. In fact, The Invisible Man might be Wells' best work (I also like how Alan Moore handled the character). Everyone should read it.

I consider it to be more of a sci-fi character study, but it is certainly disturbing at times.

[DrewEdwards]

I like it because it's from a time where sci-fi, mystery, and horror weren't fully different genres yet. It's not trying to be anyone genre. It just IS ya' know?

Moore did a good job with him. I really like his take on Hyde as well.