Top Five Novelist

Hi,

(horror/gothic stories) 

Try some of these ... as some of the stories are actually short stories. Mostly old stuff, but gives you an idea where it all started. Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto) and Ann Radcliffe (Mysteries of Udolpho) are the ones usually associated with the start of the stories in horror. My thoughts are that the Catholic Church in Europe destroyed most of it, and made sure that the writers (before then) were all burned alive. For being witches and warlocks, of course!

Mary Shelley's book is the best known, and no one ever read the book, which is far better than any film, and gives you very different ideas about the actual story.

The Marquis de Sade is here, mostly because of the horrors in France at that time, which are believed to have influenced a lot of the "horror story" ideas, and added a lot more blood to it.

Victor Hugo, ends up being a clean up of the whole thing, but it really is about the horrors of an upper class and all that.

Sheridan Le Fanu, was probably more ripped off and copied than all the others. He had the first vampire story with 2 women.

Matthew Gregory Lewis wrote, by very far. one of the most incredibly sick and horrendous story ever ... and to even read what the maggots do is ... something that is hard to contemplate.

Bram Stoker you know more than the others, although the novel is better ... it is written in DIARY format all the way to the end, and is much more suspenseful than any film.

Lord Polidori, was one of the folks with Mary, Percy and Byron, and they all created "horror stories" to entertain each other until one day Mary wrote one that ... got them all running. He was a doctor, and his stuff is gory.