I mean like more than fifty years old, those leather-bound kind of hardbacks. Something with a really original, thrilling and chilling story that will keep the hardened Stephen King fan happy. Not Frankenstein or Dracula, they're too well known.
2006-09-12 21:55:23 · 15 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
No modern authors! I'm well aware of James Herbet etc thankyou.
2006-09-12 22:03:31 · update #1
Really good horror novels are very rare (in fact, the novel-length horror hardly existed before the 1960s), but there are lots of good horror short stories. Apart from Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, I would strongly recommend the stories of M R James. An English academic who flourished about 100 years ago, he specialises in narratives in which hardly anything happens, but it happens in an extremely unsettling way. No gore, no grue, just horrors of the mind. His best-known tales include Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad; The Mezzotint; The Haunted Dolls' House; and Casting the Runes, which was very well filmed in the 1950s as Night of the Demon. Once read, you'll never forget them - even if you want to. But if you really want a novel-length horror of antique age, I'd recommend Oscar Wilde's elegantly decadent, witty and tragical The Picture of Dorian Gray (first published around 1890-something, pretty short as novels go), whose theme is that of the Faustian bargain. There is also a good Hollywood film of this, made some time in the 1940s.
2006-09-13 03:13:49 · answer #1 · answered by ken.25@btinternet.com 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Picking the 100 best horror novels is, in fact, a bit harder that the 100 best science fiction books (there's pretty good consensus on this list) or the 100 best fantasy books (there's a lot of leeway for choice here). Horror spans more categories of fiction, involving all the major genres, as well as being a subset of "real" literature. Jones and Newman (a major horror writer in his own right) do a pretty good job, quibbleable as is to be expected, but offering a good basic list of horror novels, with the added bonus of brief commentaries on the works by important writers. So here we go.
http://www.strangewords.com/weirdbooks/horror100.html
Hope this helps. this is the first in the list, this is really old 1592
1. Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
1592 Perhaps the best realization of the oft told story of selling out to the Devil and the consequences thereof.
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2006-09-12 22:07:01 · answer #2 · answered by Kangkid 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Some just slipped my mind now, sorry, but current books about 10 or so years old are great! Like Clive Barker, oh, H P Lovecraft, he is like, one of the gods of horror novels. I don't know if I am preaching to the choir here, but all you put up ther was Stephen King, Stoker and Shelley novels. So, I am going with what i mention above, if I think of others not posted in here already, I will edit this with more authors. Happy reading!
2006-09-12 22:25:55 · answer #3 · answered by Fallen 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Woman in White is a famous old ghost story - not really horror but I think Dracula and Frankenstein actually started the genre off - it didn't exist before they were written (so don't try looking for anything before those two were published).
2006-09-12 22:02:43 · answer #4 · answered by big pup in a small bath 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
So, what is horror? You like the splat novels of Clive Barnes, et al. or are you looking for something more atmospheric? Some authors leave more to your imagination...
Try the English writer M.R. James (search in Amazon): he is a long time dead, but Penguin still publish his short stories (and others: see Amazon).
Algernon Blackwood is also excellent and equally dead (and equally, see Amazon).
They can be seriously creepy, if you let your mind go where they take you. Both discover the bizarre and the occult in quite ordinary situations.
2006-09-13 02:25:21 · answer #5 · answered by Alan B 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Look for H.P Lovecraft books, The Cuthulu Mythos etc etc
(Stephen King Rate him Highly as inspiration)
2006-09-12 22:03:13 · answer #6 · answered by Banderes 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
HP Lovecraft has a number of good horror novels and stories. Robert Bloch is also a good horror writer who has been around for a long time. Ray Bradbury wrote horror as well as SF.
2006-09-13 02:42:39 · answer #7 · answered by Rose D 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" could be classed as horror I suppose. This is a classic and wonderfully written.
Henry James' "Turn of the screw". Macbeth might also be considered horror
2006-09-14 00:36:08 · answer #8 · answered by Damian K 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
HP Lovecraft. Lots of unseen nameless cosmic horror from beyond the edge of space or before the beginning of time, just waiting to be let back in...
2006-09-13 00:16:41 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Try Dennis Wheatley
2006-09-13 01:50:10 · answer #10 · answered by SANDRA O 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋