The World's Greatest Horror Stories

by Stephen Jones (Editor), Dave Carson (Editor), Charles Dickens

In The World's Greatest Horror Stories, Stephen Jones and Dave Carson have brought together twenty-one classic masterpieces of the macabre, as recommended by the most influential author of horror fiction of the twentieth century, H.P. Lovecraft.

The collection features tales by renowned masters of horror writing, such as M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe, alongside contributions from some of the world's finest authors, including Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, each prefaced by Lovecraft's own introduction.

Containing Lovecraft's ground-breaking essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, widely regarded as one of the most scholarly and extensive studies of horror fiction ever written, this is the ultimate feast of fear for fans of the macabre.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Classics

450 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Stephen Jones is an eighteen-time winner of the British Fantasy Award.

Reviews

[Phil Slattery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful stories! Classic supernatural tales demonstrating what horror should be that were lauded by none other than the father of modern supernatural horror himself, H.P. Lovecraft. I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in literature in general though particularly of course to those with an interest in the horror genre. The beauty of these tales is their ability to keep the reader in edge-of-your-seat suspense,terrified and spellbound, without resorting to the more-often-than-not overdone and too often appalling gimmicks of gore and shock. These tales show that grisly details are not needed to enthrall an audience, but that imagination and craftsmanship are.

[Galo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cutting to the chase, the stand-out stories are: Charles Dickens' The Signalman, Hanns Heinz Ewers' The Spider, Guy De Maupassant's The Horla, Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Ambrose Bierce's The Damned Thing, F. Marion Crawford's The Upper Berth, Ralph Adams Cram's The Dead Valley, Irvin S. Cobb's Fishhead, Edward Lucas White's Lukundoo, Clark Ashton Smith's The Double Shadow, Rudyard Kipling's The Mark of the Beast, Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, and M.R. James' Count Magnus.

[Steve]

I pick this one up from time to time, and read a short story from it. Just finished Machen's THE GREAT GOD PAN, which Lovecraft acknowledges as being a direct influence on THE DUNWICH HORROR. I think Lovecraft did it better, more concisely. But this is a great book to see the work that influenced H. P. his-ownself (as Joe Lansdale would say), and it kicks off with the antiquated but serious essay SUPERNATURAL FICTION IN LITERATURE which goes quite a way towards explaining the essence of the horror story. Some of the tales aren't all that, but some of them definitely have a strong creep-factor. If you find it at your local used book emporium, you could do a lot worse than this one.

[Seth]

IT WAS AWESOME LITTLE FREAKY