Horror fiction

Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any media intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the reader. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has necessarily been the intrusion of an evil, or occasionally misunderstood, supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps with science fiction and/or fantasy, all of which have been placed under the umbrella category speculative fiction. See also supernatural fiction.

Early horror fiction

Fictional characters have found themselves in horrifying situations from the earliest recorded tales. Many myths and legends feature scenarios and archetypes used by later horror writers. Tales collected by the Grimm Brothers are often quite horrific.

Related Topics:
Fictional character - Myth - Legend - Archetypes - Grimm Brothers

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Modern horror fiction found its roots in the gothic novels that exploded into popularity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, typified by Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. A variation on the Gothic formula that remains one of the most enduring and imitated horror works is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818, revised version 1831). Frankenstein has also been considered science fiction or a philosophical novel by some literary historians. Later gothic horror descendants included seminal late 19th century works like Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Early horror works used mood and subtlety to deliver an eerie and otherworldly flavor, but usually eschewed extensive explicit violence.

Related Topics:
Gothic novel - Ann Radcliffe - Horace Walpole - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Frankenstein - Science fiction - Philosophical - Bram Stoker - Dracula - Henry James - The Turn of the Screw

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Other early exponents of the horror form number such luminaries as H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, who were considered to be masters of the art. Among the writers of classic English ghost stories, M.R. James is often cited as the finest. His stories avoid shock effects and often involve an Oxford antiquarian as their hero. Algernon Blackwood's The Willows and

Related Topics:
H. P. Lovecraft - Edgar Allan Poe - Ghost - M.R. James - Oxford - Antiquarian - Algernon Blackwood

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Oliver Onions's The Beckoning Fair One have been called the best ghost stories.

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Lovecraft and Sheridan le Fanu called some of their writing weird fiction or weird stories.

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Some stories in highbrow literature could arguably be regarded as horror fiction: examples include

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Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) and In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie).

Related Topics:
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis - In the Penal Colony

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