Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 presents an American society where books have been personified and outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels.
Dorothy Kathleen Broster, usually known as D. K. Broster, was an English novelist and short-story writer. Her fiction consists mainly of historical romances set in the 18th or early 19th centuries. Her best known novel is The Flight of the Heron (1925), the first of a Jacobite trilogy.
Lucy Aikin was an English historical writer, biographer and correspondent. She also published under pseudonyms such as Mary Godolphin. Her literary-minded family included her aunt Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a writer of poetry, essays and children's books.
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.
Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, who used the pseudonyms Marjorie Bowen and Joseph Shearing, was a British author who wrote historical romances, supernatural horror stories, popular history and biography.
Leah Bodine Drake was an American poet, editor and critic.
Bibliography of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction and nonfiction writer L. Sprague de Camp:
The following is a list of works by Ray Bradbury.
"Fragment of a Novel" is an unfinished 1819 vampire horror story written by Lord Byron. The story, also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial: A Fragment", was one of the first in English to feature a vampire theme. The main character was Augustus Darvell. John William Polidori based his novella The Vampyre (1819), originally attributed in print to Lord Byron, on the Byron fragment. The vampire in the Polidori story, Lord Ruthven, was modelled on Byron himself. The story was the result of the meeting that Byron had in the summer of 1816 with Percy Bysshe Shelley where a "ghost writing" contest was proposed. This contest was also what led to the creation of Frankenstein according to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1818 Preface to the novel. The story is important in the development and evolution of the vampire story in English literature as one of the first to feature the modern vampire as able to function in society in disguise. The short story first appeared under the title "A Fragment" in the 1819 collection Mazeppa: A Poem, published by John Murray in London.
Gothic bluebooks were short forms of gothic fiction popular in the late 18th century and early 19th century.
Edmund Aikin was an English architect and writer on architecture. He spent the last years of his life in Liverpool, where he designed the Wellington Rooms.
"The Evil Eye" is a piece of short fiction written by Mary Shelley and published in The Keepsake for 1830. The tale is set in Greece and is about a man known as Dmitri of the Evil Eye. Dmitri's wife was murdered and his daughter abducted many years before the story begins. Dmitri's friend Katusthius Ziani enlists him to help recover his rightful inheritance, and during their journey they abduct a boy whom Dmitri discovers to be his grandson.
Transformation is a short story written by Mary Shelley and first published in 1831 for The Keepsake. Guido, the narrator, tells the story of his encounter with a strange, misshapen creature when he was a young man living in Genoa, Italy, around the turn of the fifteenth century. He makes a deal with the creature to exchange bodies, but the creature does not reappear at the appointed time to take his own body back. Guido discovers that the creature is pretending to be him, kills it and therefore 'himself', and eventually awakens in his own body.
"The Dream" is a Gothic tale written by Mary Shelley and first published in The Keepsake for 1832. Set in France around the turn of the seventeenth century, it is the story of a young woman named Constance who is in love with Gaspar, the son of her father's enemy. Because their fathers killed each other in battle, Constance feels she cannot marry Gaspar, even though he loves her too. She spends a night on St. Catherine's Couch, a ledge of rock overlooking a river, in the hope that St. Catherine will offer her guidance in her dreams. She does, and Constance and Gaspar are married the next day.
The Invisible Girl is a Gothic tale written by Mary Shelley and first published in The Keepsake for 1833. The tale is set in Wales, and tells the story of a young woman named Rosina, who lives with her guardian, Sir Peter Vernon, and is secretly engaged to his son, Henry. Henry is away from home when their relationship is discovered, and Sir Peter casts Rosina out of the house. Sir Peter regrets his harshness and searches for her, but assumes she is dead when she cannot be found. Henry returns home to the news of Rosina's death and is heartbroken. He joins the search for her body, and the villagers tell him about the Invisible Girl, a ghostly figure who wanders the woods at night. Henry finds Rosina hiding in a remote ruin and discovers that she is really the Invisible Girl. Sir Peter forgives them for their secret engagement, and they are married.
The type of romance considered here is mainly the genre of novel defined by the novelist Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", in contrast to mainstream novels which realistically depict the state of a society. These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Scott's novels are also frequently described as historical romances, and Northrop Frye suggested "the general principle that most 'historical novels' are romances". Scott describes romance as a "kindred term", and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".
"Raymond; a Fragment" is a short Gothic story published in 1799. Signed under the pseudonym Juvenis, it was reprinted, plagiarized, and served as the inspiration for other Gothic tales; it likely was inspired by a 1796 Gothic story. It is part of the genre of fragmentary writing, which uses supernatural motifs without explanation.