Horror Masters

[Ilsa]

I accidentally found this website, I thought it could be useful to share:

http://horrormasters.com/sub-genre.htm

[Odalisque]

I've just taken a peek at the list of Classic Horror Short Stories, and it seems very eccentric. I selected the page that should have included D K Broster (on whom I've just commented on another thread). The list omits Dorothy Kathleen Broster entirely. It also has strange omissions amongst the stories of the writers it covers. Under Algernon Blackwood's name, I can't see The Listener, Secret Worship,The Wendigo or The Willows. (Possibly the best four of his stories -- and the last named cited by Lovecraft as the best weird story ever.) The Bulwer-Lytton entry omits The Haunted and the Haunters -- surely his best story. Under A M Burrage's name The Sweeper is amongst the stories not cited. It just seems bizarre to me.

[Ilsa]

I've noticed some omissions too, but maybe they're still uploading stories I think it still remains useful

[Odalisque]

Maybe -- but take the listing for Arthur Machen, for example:

Arthur Machen -

The Bowmen

,

A Double Return

,

The Happy Children

,

The Lost Club

,

A New Christmas Carol

,

Novel of the White Powder

,

Out of the Earth

,

The Soldier’s Rest

Some of these are amongst his poorer stories -- starting with The Bowmen, which (I think) is notable only for revealing the depth of public gullability and conferring celebrity upon its author. The omissions include A Fragment of Life, The Great God Pan and The White People. If anyone wishes to argue that the eight Machen stories cited are his best, I would be interested to read it!

[Ilsa]

I also found The inmost light by Machen...Anyways, i have no clue how they chose the stories...you should write them and give advice! ;)

[Odalisque]

Quote Originally Posted by Ilsa

I also found The inmost light by Machen...Anyways, i have no clue how they chose the stories...you should write them and give advice! ;)

Perhaps I should!

And, if I were to pick just one 'novel' from the The Three Impostors, I'd go for Black Seal rather than White Powder.

[Aetherwing]

Black Seal, to be sure! And...The Willows, omitted? Perhaps Ilsa's suspicions that their work is not yet done is correct.

[RonPrice]

A few weeks ago I saw a news story of 'the last German and the last Englishman from WW1.' One of the men was 109 and the other 108! Then, just the other day, my eyes fell upon the visage of an Australian from that Great War. He was, what, 108! Forty-five years from now I will be 108, if I am still alive. Who will be on the list of recipients of my annual letter then, if I am still writing? Perhaps, if I live to such a ripe old age and I can then talk, not about WW1 as those old chaps I saw on the TV recently, but about the one referred to by one of the great master of the art of describing horror and defining its underpinnings--Henry Miller. He was not writing about guns and swords but about the horror on our times and the war we are all fighting, each in our individual ways. Miller was, as far as I know, one of the first to get away with using that "f" word in his trilogy: Sexus, Plexus and Nexus back in the 1950s and early 1960s. I was just finishing my baseball career at the time, trying to make it with girls and not very successfully....

Anyway, Miller wrote the following, and I think it was about 1941 or 1942,: "When the destruction brought about by the Second World War is complete, another set of destructions will set in. And it will be far more drastic, far more terrible, than the destruction which we are now witnessing. The whole planet will be in the throes of revolution. And the fires will rage until the very foundations of the present world crumble." Not a happy note--but very appropriate for the topic of horror and an interesting perspective on the subject--which I leave with readers to ponder.-Ron Price, Tasmania

[TheForgotton]

This looks like a great resource. I've been trying to get acquainted with some of the old authors other than Poe and Lovecraft and all I've been able to track down was some Ambrose Bierce and a bit of Bram Stoker. Where to start!

[Nightlaw]

Thanks for that very useful. I always think that Amazon could do a much better job with its sub categories. After all Horror covers such a wide range of types of story that it would help at least to separate the splatter and gore horror from the supernatural, gothic, weird horror.