Re: Supernatural Horror In Literature
Posted by:
Jim Rockhill (IP Logged)
Date: 20 April, 2002 10:35PM
What a pity about the effects a tropical climate has had on your books!
The Modern Library anthology is still in print after almost 60 years:
Herbert A. Wise & Phyllis Fraser (eds.) GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL. Modern Library, 1944.
It is not perfect--its selection of work by foreign, female and (for that time period) contemporary authors is poor--but it is a good selection of "canonical" authors in weird fiction. It could be argued that David Hartwell's excellent anthology, THE DARK DESCENT (Tor, 1987), has superseded it, but both books offer gems the other ignores, there is very little duplication, and Hartwell's representation of foreign and women authors is only a little better than Wise & Fraser's had been. At least Hartwell partially redressed this deficiency in his later anthology, THE FOUNDATIONS OF FEAR (Tor, 1992), though I still ask myself, "How could he possibly omit Vernon Lee, let alone at least a score of other fine female writers?" Pace Pierre Comtois, any extensive reading in weird fiction shows that honors in supernatural literature are due on almost equal basis between the genders.
Lovecraft is the only author of the pulps to make it into both GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL and THE DARK DESCENT. Leiber, Bloch, Sturgeon and Wellman make appearances in the latter. Smith, Howard and others appear in harder to find anthologies by the likes of Kaye, Karloff, Carr and others, but in neither of these.
Jim