Horror : a literary history Horror is unlike any other literary genre. It seeks to provoke uniquely strong reactions such as fear shock dread or disgust and yet remains very popular. Horror is most readily associated with the film industry but horrific short stories and novels have been wildly loved by readers for well over two centuries. Despite its persistent popularity until now there has been no up to date history of horror fiction for the general reader. This book offers a chronological overview of the genre in fiction and explores its development and mutations over the past 250 years. It also challenges the common misjudgement that horror fiction is necessarily frivolous or dispensable. Leading experts on Gothic and horror literature introduce readers to classics of the genre as well as exciting texts they may not have encountered before. The topics examined include: horror’s roots in the Gothic romance and antebellum American fiction; the penny dreadful and sensation novels of Victorian England; fin de siècle ghost stories; decadent fiction and the weird; the familial horrors of the Cold War era; the publishing boom of the 1980s; the establishment of contemporary horror auteurs; and the post millennial zombie trend. Introduction : what why and when is horror fiction Xavier Aldana Reyes Gothic and the cultural sources of horror 1740 1820 Dale Townshend American horror : origins and early trends Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet Horror in the nineteenth century : dreadful sensations 1820 80 Royce Mahawatte Transitions : from Victorian Gothic to modern horror 1880 1932 Roger Luckhurst Horror fiction from the decline of universal horror to the rise of the psycho killer Bernice M. Murphy The rise of popular horror 1971 2000 Steffen Hantke Post millennial horror 2000 16 Xavier Aldana Reyes