In this three-part series we will explore the forgotten tales of Poe: stories of (1) Gothic horror, (2) black humor, and (3) strange fantasies that are often overlooked (even at times by stalwart fans of his writing). Ever since he rose to literary prominence in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's body of work has been noted for its stand-out fan favorites: "Usher," "Amontillado," "Tell-Tale Heart," "Pit and the Pendulum," "Masque of the Red Death," and "The Black Cat." So

(Updated from August 2017) Every summer there are nights that I feel the urge to wander into the shady woods of my native Midwest: the air has a soft, steamy texture that carries the heavy odors of rain-soaked earth, sun-warmed grass, and air-stirred flowers, the days are lengthy and bright, the nights short and warm, and the outdoors ring with the harmonics of frogs and cicadas hidden in the dark. I haven’t been camping in a few years, but I still get that restless feeling t

He was the godfather of modern horror, weird fiction, and fantasy, an inestimable influence on Poe, Dickens, and Hawthorne, de Maupassant, Stevenson, and James, left his fingerprints on “Frankenstein,” “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” “Dracula,” and “The Turn of the Screw,” and inspired filmmakers from Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan to David Lynch and Fritz Lang (and films from “Dr. Caligari” and “Metropolis” to “The Matrix” and “Mulholland Drive”). Yet few horror fans have ever re

He was the greatest American writer of his time: mentor to Poe, Dickens, and Hawthorne, his country’s first professional author, and a writer of uniqely American ghost stories about growth, change, and identity. His was the complex personality of an existentially anxious, emotionally complex man disturbed by his fame and haunted by loneliness. These disquieting themes course through his Gothic tales – “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Devil and Tom Walker,

With only a few exceptions, Arthur Machen rarely reveled in gore, Gothic clichés, or moments of horror. He hosts no chattering skeletons, moldering corpses, or headless ghosts. Nor does he often turn to the more sophisticated horrors of Lovecraft, Hodgson, or Chambers whose shambling mutants, reeking zombies, and tentacled monstrosities shifted the direction of horror in the twentieth century. On two occasions – both in “The Three Imposters” – he indulged in the Gothic excess

Best known for his mind-blasting “King in Yellow” mythos – a series of five stories published in the eponymous 1895 anthology – Robert W. Chambers doesn’t get much more attention for his other weird fiction, ghost stories, and fantasy – and it’s a damn shame. Chambers excelled at creating an atmosphere of otherworldly dread, misanthropic cosmicism, and eldritch horror. His amphibious “Harbor Master” may have been the prototype for both the Creature of the Black Lagoon and Lov

Most famous for his monumental vampire novel, Dracula, Bram Stoker was hardly a one hit wonder: he was responsible for two other supernatural novels and around two dozen short stories and poems. Largely inspired by the gothic aesthetics of Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, his stories are at times melancholy, mystical, gory, and gruesome, but always strange and haunting. In our annotated and illustrated edition of Stoker's short

F. Marion Crawford has probably the most “bang-for-your-buck” of any of the classic horror writers: his entire oeuvre consists of about a dozen stories of which five are well-seasoned masterpieces and two are underrated classics. While Crawford was made rich and famous during his lifetime – not unlike his contemporary Robert W. Chambers – for his cosmopolitan romances, today he is almost solely recollected for this handful of supernatural stories. Included among them are five

Most famous as a children's book writer who influenced J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, and P.L. Travers, Edith Nesbit has a second, darker reputation as the writer of some of the English language's most powerful supernatural horror. Nesbit’s writing is absolutely crisp, evocative, and touching, and her legacy as both a children’s writer and a master of horror is well deserved, if not far overdue. Her stories can best be described as raw – emotionally wringing, cruel, and richly iro

J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Victorian master of shadowy terrors, is the undisputed prince of ghost story writers. While M. R. James may be their king, even Monty paid homage to his Irish inspiration, reviving Le Fanu’s reputation (by reprinting his stories in a 1923 anthology), and modelling many (if not most) of his more famous tales off of Le Fanu’s pattern. His ghost stories were chilling, and his ghosts were terrifyingly original – invasive, intrusive, aggressive: they left thei