A review by reaperreads
Horror: A Literary History by Xavier Aldana Reyes

4.0

For someone who has not read much more than a few Gothic novels and one or two contemporary horror novels, this book was incredibly informative about the scope and history of this genre. Currently, I am a Literary Studies MA student and am used to jargon-infused volumes on literary matters, so it was refreshing to find this much more approachable text at my university library. My only (very minor) gripe with this book is that it does not look as thoroughly into the roots of American horror fiction as I would have liked it to. For example, one of the authors covers Poe with broad strokes, but sort of skips around the turn of the century to arrive at Lovecraft's doorstep without any mention of Ambrose Bierce or R.W. Chambers, who are two significant influences on Lovecraft's work and psychological horror at large. As someone who is working on a thesis about Bierce, it felt sort of disheartening to not see him credited as a major influence on Lovecraft nor on the journalistic tact with which contemporary horror fiction is composed. But, I can set aside my fanatic interest in Bitter Bierce and give Horror: A Literary History a superb rating because it most definitely helped supplement my knowledge in this area and is by far a more accurate representation of this field of genre study than Continuum's volume written by Gina Wisker. (I guess we cannot always trust a scholarly publishing house to fact-check its authors...) Anyway, I highly recommend Horror: A Literary History for readers who are not as familiar with this genre as they would like to be--who want to broaden their knowledge of the history and societal function of horror fiction through the generations of mostly American and English authors.