Supernatural Horror in Literature by H.P. Lovecraft

Trade paperback format.  Highly recommended.  A great way to build a reading list! H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), the most important American supernaturalist since Poe, has had an incalculable influence on all the horror-story writing of recent decades. Although his supernatural fiction has of late been enjoying an unprecedented fame, it is still not widely known that he wrote a critical history of supernatural horror in literature that has yet to be superseded as the finest historical discussion of the genre. This extraordinary work is presented in this volume in its final, revised text.With incisive penetration and power, Lovecraft here formulates the aesthetics of supernatural horror, and summarizes in masterful fashion the range of its literary expression from primitive folklore to the tales of his own 20th-century masters. Following a discussion of terror-literature in ancient, medieval and renaissance culture, he launches on a critical survey of the whole history of horror fiction