American Gothic Tales is an anthology of "gothic" American short fiction. Edited and with an Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates, it was published by Plume in 1996. It featured contributions by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Anne Rice and others, and included over 40 stories. [1]
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
Charles Brockden Brown was an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period. He is generally regarded by scholars as the most important American novelist before James Fenimore Cooper. He is the most frequently studied and republished practitioner of the "early American novel," or the U.S. novel between 1789 and roughly 1820. Although Brown was not the first American novelist, as some early criticism claimed, the breadth and complexity of his achievement as a writer in multiple genres makes him a crucial figure in U.S. literature and culture of the 1790s, and the first decade of the 19th century. He has been referred to as the "Father of the American Novel." Brown was also a significant public intellectual in the wider Atlantic print culture and public sphere during the era of the French Revolution.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the labels of New Weird and Slipstream, which continues into the 21st century.
"Young Goodman Brown" is a short story published in 1835 by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story takes place in 17th-century Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that all of humanity exists in a state of depravity, but that God has destined some to unconditional election through unmerited grace. Hawthorne frequently focuses on the tensions within Puritan culture, yet steeps his stories in the Puritan sense of sin. In a symbolic fashion, the story follows Young Goodman Brown's journey into self-scrutiny, which results in his loss of virtue and belief.
"William Wilson" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years on the outskirts of London. The tale features a doppelgänger. It also appeared in the 1840 collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and has been adapted several times.
"The Minister's Black Veil" is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was first published in the 1836 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, edited by Samuel Goodrich. It later appeared in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Hawthorne published in 1837.
Felix Octavius Carr Darley was an American illustrator, known for his illustrations in works by well-known 19th-century authors, including James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Mary Mapes Dodge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, George Lippard, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Donald Grant Mitchell, Clement Clarke Moore, Francis Parkman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Parker Willis.
Twice-Told Tales is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first volume was published in the spring of 1837 and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence the name.
Dark Romanticism is a literary sub-genre of Romanticism, reflecting popular fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque. Often conflated with Gothic fiction, it has shadowed the euphoric Romantic movement ever since its 18th-century beginnings. Edgar Allan Poe is often celebrated as one of the supreme exponents of the tradition. Dark Romanticism focuses on human fallibility, self-destruction, judgement, punishment, as well as the psychological effects of guilt and sin.
The influence of Edgar Allan Poe on the art of music has been considerable and long-standing, with the works, life and image of the horror fiction writer and poet inspiring composers and musicians from diverse genres for more than a century.
Graham's Magazine was a nineteenth-century periodical based in Philadelphia established by George Rex Graham and published from 1840 to 1858. It was alternatively referred to as Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine of Literature and Art, Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, and Graham's Illustrated Magazine of Literature, Romance, Art, and Fashion.
Edgar Allan Poe has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, comics, film, and other media. Besides his works, the legend of Poe himself has fascinated people for generations. His appearances in popular culture often envision him as a sort of "mad genius" or "tormented artist", exploiting his personal struggles. Many depictions of Poe interweave elements of his life with his works, in part due to Poe's frequent use of first-person narrators, suggesting an erroneous assumption that Poe and his characters are identical.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is a collection of previously published short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1840.
The Book League of America, Inc. was a US book publisher and mail order book sales club. It was established in 1930, a few years after the Book of the Month Club. Its founder was Lawrence Lamm, previously an editor at Macmillan Inc. The company was located at 100 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York in a 240,000-square-foot (22,000 m2) office building that was constructed in 1906. It printed and distributed a variety of volumes in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. A victim of the Great Depression, the Book League of America was purchased by Doubleday in 1936.
The Shadow Dragons, released on October 27, 2009, is the fourth novel of The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, a book series begun by Here, There Be Dragons. It was preceded by The Indigo King and followed by The Dragon's Apprentice.
American gothic fiction is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality versus the irrational, puritanism, guilt, the uncanny, ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.
To celebrate its 60th anniversary circa 1995, Penguin Books released several boxed sets of "Penguin 60s", miniature books about sixty pages in length. The books were also sold individually.
The Mind's Eye was a publisher which produced dramatized adaptations of various written works, most notably the 1979 National Public Radio radio drama version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and in 1980, The Hobbit. Prominent players include Bernard Mayes, Erik Bauersfeld, John Vickery, Lou Bliss, Gail Chugg, Tom Luce, Ray Reinhardt, James Arrington, Pat Franklyn, Wanda McCaddon, Rick Cimino, Joe Gostanian, John Joss, Karen Hurley, Kevin Gardiner, Darryl Ferreira, and Carl Hague. The company was acquired by Soundelux in 1992.
American Fantastic Tales is a set of two reprint horror anthologies, released as American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps and American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now. Both anthologies were edited by Peter Straub. They were published by Library of America in 2009. The anthologies contain horror stories by American authors from the 18th century to modern times, split at 1940. The anthology pair itself won the 2010 World Fantasy Award—Anthology. The pair were also released as a boxed set in 2009.