Author Description

In this volume S. T. Joshi continues his incisive analysis of the leading authors of weird fiction, from the nineteenth century to the present day. He begins with a study of John William Polidori, author of the seminal tale The Vampyre (1819). Overviews of the weird work of Guy de Maupassant, William Sharp (who wrote under the female pseudonym Fiona Macleod), Robert Hichens, and others follow. Such leading figures as Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James are discussed, as well as several aspects of the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Joshi examines some provocative writers for the pulp magazine Weird Tales (John Martin Leahy, Dorothy Quick, Eli Colter) and then proceeds to such contemporary writers as T. E. D. Klein, Mark Samuels, and Ramsey Campbell. In this book Joshi demonstrates the continued relevance of the weird tale over the past two centuries.