Weird Fiction in the Later 20th Century

The literature of horror and supernatural fiction experienced a tremendous revival in the final three decades of the 20th century, becoming a best-selling phenomenon for the first time since the Gothic novels of the later 18th and early 19th centuries. But the groundwork for this revival was laid by the powerful work for Shirley Jackson, whose novels and tales explored ghosts and haunted houses along with keen insights into human psychology. The British writer Ramsey Campbell revolutionized the field with the story collection Demons by Daylight (1973) and numerous other works. Best-selling writers such as William Peter Blatty, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice generally used standard horror themes in conventional ways, and their work is far excelled by such dynamic writers as T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, and David J. Schow. In this pioneering study of weird fiction after the death of Lovecraft, S. T. Joshi provides perspicacious analyses of more than a dozen leading writers of weird fiction in the later 20th century, pungently exposing King and others as hacks and tyros while championing the aesthetically sincere work of lesser-known writers. The result is a landmark study that reshapes our view of the development of this popular literary genre.