Whether it’s vampires or werewolves or mysterious patterns in wallpaper, writers of Gothic short stories have used all sorts of horrors and frights to chill our blood, ever since the horror short story developed in the early nineteenth century. Below, we pick ten of the very best Gothic horror tales […]
On Tuesday, we summarised ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, W. W. Jacobs’ popular and widely anthologised short horror story about a mummified paw which has the power to grant three wishes to three men. Now, it’s time to offer some words of analysis and commentary on this intriguing and brilliantly constructed tale.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Before analysing this classic novella, it’s worth summarising the plot of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and drawing the reader’s attention to its interesting narrative structure.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new introduction to horror fiction Trying to tell the story of the horror genre in under 200 pages may seem a daunting prospect – indeed, almost a horrifying one. But thankfully in Sleeping With the Lights On: […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle salutes the Welsh wizard of horror fiction Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is one of those writers who seem destined to fall in and out of fashion. Having attained fame, swiftly followed by notoriety, in 1895 when his book The Three […]