H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)
The One and Only. Master of Suspense and Horror



Pickman's Model, The Dunwich Horror, The Music of Erich Zann, The Rats in the Walls

Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker had an unequalled influence on the horror genre with the publication of his novel Dracula. But Stoker also wrote some of the best supernatural and ghost stories of the closing decade of the nineteenth century.

The Judges House, The Castle of the King, The Secret of the Growing Gold, The Squaw, The Burial of the Rats, The Dualitists

Dracula's Guest, and Other Weird Stories (1914

Its Poe, for Pete's sake. The undisputed master of Horror

Henry James (1843-1916)
This famous author wrote more than a dozen excellent ghost stories.

The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, The Jolly Corner

A Passionate Pilgrim (1875)
Stories Revived (1885)

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Ambrose Bierce was a writer noted for his satirical stories during the American Civil War (e.g. Tales of Soldiers and Civilians 1891). Bierce also had a fascination with the occult and supernatural and was a competent author in this area. This interest also led him to write his much-respected Dictionary of Death. It is believed that Bierce mysteriously fled civilisation and travelled to Mexico. His eventual fate is unknown.

The Boarded Window, The Moonlit Road, Staley Fleming's Hallucination, The Secret of Macarger's Gulch, The Death of Halpin Frayser, One Summer Night, A Diagnosis of Death, Moxon's Master, A Tough Tussle, One of Twins, The Haunted Valley, A Jug of Syrup, A Resumed Identity, A Baby Tramp, The Night-Doings at `Deadman's', Beyond the Wall, A Psychological Shipwreck, The Middle Two of the Right Foot, John Mortonson's Funeral, The Realm of the Unreal, John Bartine's Watch, The Damned Thing, Haita the Shepherd, An Inhabitant of Carcosa, The Stranger

Can Such Things Be (1893)

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was an Anglo-Irish journalist, great-nephew of the dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan and publisher of several periodicals in Dublin. He was one of the first to develop the ghost story into a recognisable genre. His tale Schalken the Painter is often quoted as the best ghost story of the 19th century.

Schalken the Painter, Carmilla, Green Tea, Squire Toby's Will, Mr Justice Harbottle, The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh, The Familiar, Madam Crowl's Ghost, The Haunted Baronet, An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street, The Dead Sexton, Ghost Stories of the Tiled House, The White Cat of Drumgunniol, An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House, Sir Dominick's Bargain, Ultor de Lacy

Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851)
Chronicles of Golden Friars (1871)
The Purcell Papers (1880)
In a Glass Darkly (1872)
The Watcher and Other Weird Stories (1894)
Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Stories (1923)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American novelist and short story writer, most famous for his novel The Scarlet Letter

He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea captain. He led there a shy and rather over protected life; yet not wholly uncongenial to his artistic development. Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdoin College. He wrote several successful short stories which were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837).

Insufficient earnings as a writer forced Hawthorne to take a job in the Salem Custom House. By 1842, he was able to earn enough to marry Sophia Peabody and move to Concord, which was then the center of the Transcendental movement.

Hawthorne returned to Salem in 1845 and in 1850, his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter was published. His next novel was The House of the Seven Gables(1851) He also wrote two classic works for children A Wonder Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853) He wrote another novel The Marble Faun in 1860 and an account of a journey to England Our Old Home in 1863.

Nathaniel Hawthorne died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on May 18th, 1864.

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797. Her parents were the ardent feminist, Mary Wollestonecraft, and the radical-anarchist philosoper, William Godwin. She had little formal schooling and eloped with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley at sixteen.
Mary Shelley’s life was filled with tragedy, from the death of her mother in childbirth to the drowning of her husband when she was about twenty-five. Her first child died soon after its birth. Throughout his life with her, Percy Shelley encouraged his wife to write. She did so in 1816 when she was in Switzerland with him. She developed and wrote Frankenstein for a contest involving ghost stories. After her husband’s death, Mary Shelley wrote Valperga, The Last Man, Lodore, and Falkner.
On February 1, 1851, Mary Shelley died. She was suvived by one son, Percy Florence.

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)

1771-1810, American novelist and editor, b. Philadelphia, considered the first professional American novelist. After the publication of Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798), he wrote such novels as Edgar Huntly (1799), Arthur Mervyn (2 vol., 1799-1800), and Ormond (1799), in which he presented arguments for social reform. Wieland (1799) was by far his most popular work and foreshadowed the psychological novel. To support himself after 1800 he became a merchant but also edited successively three periodicals, wrote political pamphlets, and projected a compendium on geography.

Algernon Blackwood
(1869 - 1951)


English writer of ghost stories and supernatural fiction, of whom Lovecraft wrote: "He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere." His powerful story "The Willows," which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only "foremost of all" Blackwood's tales but the best "weird tale" of all time. (Unfortunately, Blackwood, who was familiar with Lovecraft's work, failed to return the compliment. As he told Peter Penzoldt, he found "spiritual terror" missing in his young admirer's writing, while it was all-important in his own.)


Among his many works, Blackwood wrote a series of stories and short novels featuring John Silence, a "physician extraordinary" or psychic detective. He also wrote light fantasy and children's books, but best remembered for his ghost stories.


The son of a preacher, Blackwood was always interested in the supernatural, the occult and spiritualism and was a firm believer in the higher powers of humanity. Episodes Before Thirty (1923) tells of his lean years as a journalist in New York. In the late 1940s, Blackwood had a television program on the BBC on which he read . . . ghost stories!

Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Washington Irving was the famous author of Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow who was a younger friend of Sir Walter Scott. Scott is believed to have encouraged Irving to explore supernatural fiction.

The Spectre Bridegroom, The Devil and Tom Walker, Governor Manco and the Soldier, The Tale of the German Student

The Alhambra (1832)

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936)
Montague Rhodes James was a well-educated mediaevalist who became Provost of King's College Cambridge in 1905 and was then Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1913 to 1915. He published a number of memorable works and is widely regarded as having developed the modern ghost story. His first collection was highly influential.

The Rose Garden, Lost Hearts, Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, The Treasure of Abbott Thomas, Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book, The Mezzotint, The Ash- tree, Number 13, Count Magnus, A School Story, The Tractate Middoth, Casting the Runes, The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, Martin's Close, Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance, The Residence at Whitminster, The Diary of Mr. Poynter, An Episode of Cathedral History, The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance, Two Doctors, The Haunted Doll's House, The Uncommon Prayer-Book, A Neighbour's Landmark, A View From a Hill, A Warning to the Curious, An Evening's Entertainment, There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard, Rats, After Dark in the Playing Fields, Wailing Well, Stories I have Tried to Write

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904)
More Ghost Stories (1911)
A Thin Ghost and Others (1919)
A Warning to the Curious (1925)
Collected Ghost Stories (1931)
Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James (1984)

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904)
Lafcadio Hearn settled in Japan in 1890 after living for twenty years in America. He was very interested in the myths and legend of the East, particularly India, China and Japan and these often formed the basis of his many supernatural stories.

Yuki-Onna

Some Chinese Ghosts (1887)
In Ghostly Japan (1899)
Kotto (1902)
Kwaidan (1904)
Fantastics (1914)

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but finally was allowed to study law at Edinburgh University. In his early twenties he became afflicted with a severe respiratory illness from which he was to suffer for the rest of his life; it was at this time that he determined to become a professional writer. The harsh nature of the Scottish climate forced him to spend long periods abroad and he eventually settled in Samoa, where he died on 3 December 1894.

"Stevenson's Calvinistic upbringing gave him a preoccupation with pre-destination and a fascination with the presence of evil. In Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde he explores the darker side of the human psyche, and the character of the Master in The Master of Ballantrae (1889) was intended to be 'all I know of the Devil'. Stevenson is well known for his novels of historical adventure, including Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and Catriona (1893).

"During the last years of his life Stevenson's creative range developed considerably and The Beach of Falesß brought to fiction the kind of scene now associated with Conrad and Maugham.

"At the time of his death Robert Louis Stevenson was working on his unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston, which is at once a romantic historical novel and an emotional reworking of one of Stevenson's own most distressing experiences, the conflict between father and son."