J. A. Cuddon (1928–1996)

This 1984 collection has some gems and a certain breadth but suffers from a weak almost nerdy academic introduction filled with fact but weak on interpretation. A Wikipedia article before its time.

The definition of horror is very wide. The brutal realism of Prosper Merimee's primitive and vengeful 'Mateo Falcone' sits alongside a pulp tale of derring-do (the oft-anthologised 'Leiningen Versus The Ants') and a sardonic and satirical horror tale like Robert Graves' 'Earth to Earth'. But yet show more there is little true cosmic horror - no H P Lovecraft or Arthur Machen.

What are the five star stories in a three-star collection made for collection completists? Apart from decent works by Hogg, Merimee (as above), Poe, Henry James, Maupassant, R L Stevenson, Zola, Kafka ...

* William Hope Hodgson's decidedly creepy 'The Derelict': the nearest the collection gets to Lovecraftian uneasiness;

* Lord Dunsany's dark little masterpiece of criminal psychopathy, "The Two Bottles of Relish";

* Evelyn Waugh's desperate tale of entrapment and obsession, "The Man Who Liked Dickens";

* Geoffrey Household's disturbing tale of mental unbalance, "Taboo" - a twist on the werewolf legend;

* Muriel Spark's magnificently cold and English ghost story, "The Portobello Road"

* Roald Dahl's typically sick "Man from the South".

A decent enough collection but not one that will keep one awake at night. And that is what horror should do ... show less

I have been dipping in and out of this behemoth during our year of plague. What a remarkable volume it is! Cuddon was a true intellect, a storehouse of literary knowledge, and he here tosses scraps of his enduring wisdom to we poor beggars at the feast. There are two things that make this stand out. First, Cuddon reminds us that we have forgotten how to be true literary omnivores. He will throw in half of a poem by Dryden or Crabbe or Manley Hopkins or Housman, reflect briefly on works from show more the Ancient Era through to the 1980s, and encourage us to be better, more accommodating readers. To treat Milton and Eliot on the same level, or Brecht and Osborne. Second, Cuddon reminds us that we have - in our own dispiriting 21st century way - forgotten how to love. Or, conversely, we have forgotten the theory of "aesthetic distance" - you'll need to look that up in this dictionary, but at heart it covers the notion of how attached we should get to a text's ideology and meaning to us personally, as opposed to its literary value and meaning intended by the author. Cuddon is not hung up on whether a movement, author, or philosophy quoted within fits with our modern sensibilities, nor whether it ticks a box on some well-meaning checklist. This is about quality and intent, nothing more.

Well, almost. Cuddon is also unashamedly personal; this is his work, and he'll damn sure make you aware of that! (At one point, he rather cheekily refers to "those poets who suffered from Imagism"!)

Bravo. show less

According to the OED the word horror was used in the sense of a "loathing fear, feeling terror or repugnance", as early as the fourteenth century with one example cited from no less than Chaucer in "The Parson's Tale" from his inestimable Canterbury Tales. So the notion has been around a long time and in use by a broad range of authors.
This anthology provides just such a broad range of writers both famous and those not so well-known. Writers include expected representatives like Poe, Henry show more James, Balzac, Maupassant, Stevenson, and Bierce, among others. But there are those unexpected and unknown to this reader like Percival Landon D. K. Broster, and Monica Dickens. Those authors are surprisingly few and those who are famous also include twentieth century contributors like Bradbury, William Faulkner, Patricia Highsmith and Roald Dahl. This is a quality collection of some of the best examples of the horror story genre that I would recommend to both beginners and experienced readers of terror-filled and haunting tales. show less

Ok, the book is quite *hefty*, but it does become very handy if you are studying for an English degree. I had a smaller one, but I ended up buying this one because I was losing out on some literary criticism terms. Some entries do takes a certain number of pages, and can be quite confusing, but other ones are fine, and the terms allowed me to understand some particularly complicated terms. This book will be kept on my shelves, because it has become an essential tool for my studies.