A Guide to Fantasy Authors and Tales

Daniel Defoe Daniel Foe (1660-1731) adopted the ‘De’ 1703.
The True-Born Englishman 1701, satirical poem; The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 1702, a satirical pamphlet that got him imprisoned and pilloried; Hymn to the Pillory 1703, a mock ode; Wrote literary essays, weekly journalism, histories, economic studies, etc; ‘with over 500 verified publications to his name, he is the most prolific author in the English language.” [CGL]; Robinson Crusoe 1719; Memoirs of a Cavalier 1720; Captain Singleton 1720; Moll Flanders 1722; A Journal of the Plague Year 1722; Colonel Jack 1722; Roxana 1724.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Gulliver's Travels (1726). A satire on pride and folly. Lemuel Gulliver's travels take him first to the small, and small minded, Lilliputians who argue about which end an egg should be opened. Then to the large but modest Brobdingnagians who are unimpressed by his account of European civilisation. Then to Laputa, a flying island where the impractical nobles have their heads in the clouds, and Lagado where the scientists are breeding sheep without wool or extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Then to Glubbdubrib, the island of sorcerers, where famous historical figures are summoned from the past, to his disillusionment. He meets the immortal, but increasingly decrepit, Struldbruggs. Then to the land of the rational horse-like Houyhnhnms and the brutish Yahoos.

John Arbuthnot (1667-1735)
The History of John Bull 1712, five satirical pamphlets against the Duke of Marlborough, origin of the 'John Bull' image of England; he was the chief contributor to the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus 1741, satirising poor writers who had read widely but not wisely, produced by the 'Scriblerus Club' whose members included Congreve, Gay, Pope and Swift. He was also a physician to Queen Anne and wrote on medical matters.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
The Rape of the Lock 1712, a mock epic, burlesque on a contemporary family feud caused by Lord Petre's cutting off a lock of a girl's hair; The Dunciad 1728, a mock-heroic satire on 'dulness'. He also translated the Iliad and Odyssey into verse.

Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764). The ghost of Alfonso, rightful prince of Otranto, gradually grows in size (presumably representing the growing fear and guilt of the usurper's grandson Manfred) until it ruins the castle. Supposedly a translation from Italian.

Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Münchhausen (1720-1797)
He was known as a narrator of ridiculously exaggerated exploits, but seems not to have published them himself. Collections of stories attributed to him were published in various English and German editions from 1781 onwards. These are by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737-1794) Vademecum für lustige Leute (Companion for Merry Men) periodical 1781-83, which contained stories later published in Baron Munchhausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia 1785, and by Gottfried Burger (1747-1794) Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages and Sporting Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson ... 1786. The stories are based partly on German jokes of the period, and partly satire on other travellers' tales. [CBD, EOF]

Clara Reeve (1729-1807)
The Old English Baron (The Champion of Virtue) (1777). Gothic novel inspired by Walpole.

James Bruce (1730-1794)
Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile 1790. “contained such curious accounts of the manners of the Abyssinians that many considered them fictitious at the time” [CBD]

Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
Comic dramatist best known for Le Barbier de Seville 1775; and La Folle Journee ou le Mariage de Figaro 1784. Adapted operatically by Mozart and Rossini.

Ueda Akinari (1734-1804)
Tales of the Pale Moon After Rain (Ugetsu Monogatari) (1776). Japanese ghost stories.

Marquis de Sade (Count Donatien Alphonse Sade, 1740-1814)
Justine; or, The Misfortunes of Virtue (1791); The 120 Days of Sodom not published until 1904. The term "sadism" was introduced in the Dictionnaire Universal (1834). The term was adopted by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) in his Psychopathia Sexualis (1876) along with the term "masochism", after the works of his contemporary Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-95).

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
"The House of Night" (a 'graveyard' poem) (1799).

William Godwin (1756-1836)
Caleb Williams (1794) realistic horror, villain Falkland; The Enquirer (1797); St. Leon (1799); Antonio (1800).

William Beckford (1760-1844)
Vathek: An Arabian Tale (1786). The caliph Vathek sacrifices 50 children to gain power and knowledge. But he, his lover princess Nouronihar and his mother Catharis a Greek sorceress, end up in the domain of Eblis, where their hearts burn in eternal torment.

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789); A Sicilian Romance (1790); The Romance of the Forest (1791); The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), villain Montoni; The Italian (1797) villain Schedoni; Gaston de Blondeville (1826). Gothic romances.

James Hogg (1770-1835); ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’.
The Three Perils of Women (1822); The Three Perils of Man (1823); Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) Gil-Martin, satanic figure. Stories include: Mary Burnet, George Dobson's Expedition to Hell, Strange Letter of a Lunatic, The Brownie of the Black Haggs. Also wrote poetry with gothic influence.

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)
Wieland: or The Transformation (1798) The first example of ‘American Gothic’ featuring spontaneous combustion and ventriloquism; Arthur Mervyn (1794) urban gothic; Ormond: or The Secret Witness (1799) Illuminati secret society in America; Edgar Huntly: or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) somnambulism and racial conflict with American Indians. His novels exhibit rationalist explanations of apparent supernatural effects; and mentally disoriented narrators. Clara Howard (1986); Alcuin (1987); ?? listed in FF.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Poems: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798); Christabel (1816); Kubla Khan (1816);

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818)
The Monk (1796). Ambrosio a monk overly proud of his holy image is seduced by demon in the form of Rosario, a novice monk, who is a female, Matilda in disguise. He is led into acts of rape and murder. With incidental appearances by the Wandering Jew and the Bleeding Nun. "Although Lewis translated Part One of Goethe's Faust for Byron in 1817, the Monk's Faustian pact - which occurs only towards the end of the novel - derives from French and English versions of a Persian tale, the Santon Barsisa" [Nicola Trott in HGL]. The Bravo of Venice (1805); Feudal Tyrants (1806). Also wrote plays and poetry.

Charlotte Dacre Rosa Matilda (-)
Zofloya; or, The Moor: a Romance of the Fifteenth Century (1806) An imitation of Lewis's Monk.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Northanger Abbey (begun 1797 and completed by 1803 but not published until 1818); satirises the gothic novel.

E. T. A. Hoffmann Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776-1822), replaced Wilhelm by Amadeus in 1810.
The Devil's Elixirs (1815-16); Views and Opinions of Murr, the Tomcat (1819-21); Tales include: The Crock of Gold (1814), The Sandman (1916), Nutcracker and Mouse-King (1816). He also wrote music and a fairy-tale opera Undine (1814). His work was popularised in Jacques Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann (1881).

Washington Allston (-)
Monaldi (1822) novella; “argued in his Lectures on Art that the gradations between the beautiful and the sublime have a dark analogue descending to the ugly and then rising again to complete the circle. ‘And in this dark segment’, he claimed, ‘will be found the startling union of deepening discords – still deepening as it rises from the Ugly to the Loathsome, the Horrible, the Frightful, the Appalling’.” [HGL].

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818). Scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a living creature from parts of dead bodies, but destroys the mate he is creating for the creature through fear that their progeny 'might make the very existence of man a condition precarious and full of terror'.

John (William) Polidori (1795-1821)
The Vampyre 1819.

Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824)
Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The hero has made a pact with Satan to prolong his life; but the debt can be transferred if he can find someone willing to assume it. Melmoth approaches various likely candidates, but no-one will change places and he is doomed.

Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Salmagundi (1807-8), satire written with James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860); The Sketch Book (1819-20) miscellany including: Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Westminster Abbey, Tales of a Traveller (1824) includes: The Adventure of the German Student (a girl with a broad neckband proves to have been guillotined). Also much travel and historical writing.

Brothers Grimm (Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm 1785-1863 and Wilhelm Carl Grimm 1786-1859)
Grimm's Fairy Tales (Kinder und Hausmärchen) first volume (1812) " a foundation for the science of comparative folklore" [CBD] second volume (1815); third volume (1822); they also began a German dictionary. Wilhelm: Deutsche Heldensage (Heroic Legends) (1829); Jacob: Deutsche Mythologie (1835) "dealt with old Teutonic superstitions" [CBD].

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Precaution (1819); The Spy (1821) underside of the American Revolution; The Pilot (1823); The Last of the Mohicans (1826); The Prairie (1826); The Red Rover (1827); The Bravo (1831) Venetian intrigue; The Pathfinder (1840); The Deerslayer (1841); The Two Admirals (1842); Wing-and-Wing (1842); Satanstoe (1845); Wrote 33 novels in all, plus naval history and biography.

James (Justinian) Morier (c.1780-1849)
The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan 1824, how Hajji Baba barber, doctor and executioner's assistant rises to be adviser to the Shah of Persia. The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England 1828. Also wrote about his travels in Persia.

Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
English naval officer 1806-1830, and author of novels on sea life: Frank Mildmay 1829; Peter Simple 1833; Jacob Faithful (1834); Mr Midshipman Easy 1834; Japhet in Search of a Father 1836; Snarleyyow 1837; The Phantom Ship (1839), with gothic features; The Ocean Waif 1839, a drama; Poor Jack; Masterman Ready 1841, a reaction to Johann Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson, about the marooned Seagrave family, struggling to survive and fighting savages, during which their faithful servant Ready dies; The Poacher; Percival Keene; The Children of the New Forest 1847, an historical novel for children, set in the English Civil War, with Royalist children hiding from the Roundheads.

John Neal (1793-1876)
Logan (1822) hereditary family madness in the wilderness; Rachel Dyer (1828) about Salem witchcraft trials 1692.

Jeremias Gotthelf (Albert Bitzius 1797-1854)
The Black Spider (1842). The Devil's kiss on a midwife's cheek saves her people from tyrannical knights, but when denied his due - a newborn baby - a burning mark develops on her cheek in the shape of a spider, and finally erupts, unleashing masses of spiders that carry plague. [HBB]

Alexander Sergevich Pushkin (1799-1837)
The Queen of Spades (1834) [HBB].

Victor Hugo (Victor Marie Hugo 1802-85)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre Dame de Paris) (1831).

Major John Richardson (-)
Wacousta (1832); set in 1763 during the Indian rising led by Pontiac, telling of halfbreed Wacousta's revenge against Colonel de Haldimar and his family.

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer (1803-1873); After 1843, Bulwer-Lytton. After 1866, Lord Lytton.
Falkland (1827); Pelham (1828); Paul Clifford (1830), famous for its opening line; “It was a dark and stormy night ...”; Eugene Aram (1832); Godolphin (1833); The Last Days of Pompeii (1834); Ernest Maltravers (1837), Alice; or The Mysteries (1838), together called Eleusiniana; Zanoni (1842) “The hero is a ... master of the occult arts possessed of the secret of eternal life, whose superhuman powers begin to fail him when he falls in love ... he marries the girl, and eventually dies in her place on the guillotine ...” [CGL] Harold (1843); Lucretia; or, The Children of Night (1846) “A dark tale of corruption, greed, bigamy, and murder which ends with its vicious anti-heroine a raving maniac, confined in a Gothic madhouse” [HGL]; The Haunted and the Haunters (1859); A Strange Story (1862). The Coming Race (1871) “An American mining engineer descends to the centre of the earth and encounters ... people with control over a mysterious kinetic energy, called Vril, which gives them unbounded powers. ... For a time the word Vril became associated with any strength-giving elixir: hence Bovril” [CGL]; Also wrote plays and poetry. Was a member of the Rosy Cross and, from 1866, Honorary Grand Patron of the Order.

William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-82)
"The Test of Affection" (European Magazine 1822); "The Spectre Bride" (Arliss's Pocket Magazine 1822); December Tales (1823); Rookwood (1834); Jack Sheppard (1839); The Miser's Daughter (1842); The Lancashire Witches (1848); published 39 novels in all. [HGL]

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75)
Agnes and the Merman 1833; Wonderful Stories for Children 1846; Many collected editions since. His 250 or so short stories include; The Constant Tin-Soldier; The Ice Maiden; The Little Match-Girl; The Little Mermaid (or Sea Maid); The Red Shoes; The Snow Queen; The Emperor's New Clothes; The Tinderbox; Thumbelina; The Ugly Duckling.

Robert Montgomery Bird (1806-1854)
Nick of the Woods (1837) schizophrenic Quaker/Indian killer who cuts crosses on victims.

William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870)
Martin Faber (1833) in style of William Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64)
Twice-Told Tales (1837 + 1842) includes; Young Goodman Brown; Mosses from an Old Manse (1846); The Scarlet Letter (1850); The Snow Image and Other Tales (1851); House of the Seven Gables (1851) ancestral curse of the Pyncheons; The Blithedale Romance (1852); The Marble Faun (1860).

Eugène Sue(Marie Joseph Eugène Sue 1804-57)
Mysteries of Paris (1842-3); The Wandering Jew (1844-5); The Seven Cardinal Sins (1847-9); The Mysteries of the People (1849-56). Melodramatic novels serialised in French newspapers. "The Wandering Jew has got, as the form demands, everything: an heiress ... in a lunatic asylum; a destitute hunchbacked seamstress of the highest moral character hopelessly in love with a blacksmith (who is a patriotic poet on the side); bloodthirsty panthers, telepathic twins, debauchery, murder, suicide, duels, supernatural manifestations, blazing passions, wild mobs, a plague of cholera, scenes in Java and the Arctic, the two best reading-of-the-will scenes ... and the nastiest crew of villains ever brought together in one book" [Thomas M. Disch in HBB]

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838); Pym was confronted with something white beyond reason. Short stories: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840); Tales of Edgar A. Poe (1845); later published together as Tales of Mystery and Imagination they include: Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, The Cask of Amontillado, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Thomas Peckett Prest (1810-1879)
Writer of "penny dreadfuls"; The String of Pearls; or, The Sailor's Gift (better known as: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street) (1846-8); Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood (1847-9).

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852); Dred (1856). Anti-slavery novels.

Charles Dickens (Charles John Huffam Dickens 1812-70)
The Pickwick Papers (1837) includes interpolated terror-tales; Oliver Twist (1837-8); A Christmas Carol (1843). The miserly Scrooge is warned by the shade of his former partner Jacob Marley, and then haunted by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-to-come. Chastened, he changes his ways. Bleak House (1852-3); Great Expectations (1860-1)The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).

(Wilhelm) Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Operatic composer, and writer, who wrote his own librettos. Operas: Die Feen {The Fairies} (1834); Das Liebesverbot {Forbidden Love} (1836); Rienzi (1842) based on the novel by Bulwer-Lytton; Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) (1843); Tannhauser (1845); Lohengrin (1848); Das Rheingold (1853); Die Walkure (1856); Siegfried (1857); Tristan und Isolde (1859, performed 1865); Die Meistersinger 1868; The Ring of the Nibelungen (Rheingold, Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung) (1876) first complete performance of the four-opera cycle at Bayreuth, though the poem had been completed in 1852; Parsifal (1882); Writings: Art of the Future (1849); Judaism in Music (1850) anti-semitic; Opera and Drama (1851); Communication to my Friends (1852); My Life Posthumous autobiography. “Wagner drew upon Teutonic mythology for his great cycle of operas, The Ring. He took the stories on which the cycle is based from a Scandinavian source, the Verse Edda, not ... the German version ... in the Niebelungenlied ... except in ... the last part of The Ring.” [Francis King in MIE]

J. Sheridan Le Fanu Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)
Wrote Irish historical fiction 1838-48. Gothic short stories: Schalcken the Painter (1839), Borrhomeo the Astrologer, The Botheration of Tim Farmiloe (1861-2). Sensation novels: The House by the Churchyard (1863); Wylder's Hand (1864); Uncle Silas (1864). Stories: Chronicles of Golden Friars (1871); In A Glass Darkly (1872) introduces the forensic sleuth Dr Hesselius, includes longer story Carmilla.

G. W. M. Reynolds (1814-1879)
Chartist and writer of "penny dreadfuls": Mysteries of London (1844-8); Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1847); Mysteries of the Courts of London (1848-56).

George Lippard (-)
The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall (1845) underside of Philadelphia.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)
Jane Eyre (1847) Rochester, lives under the burden of a crazed wife concealed in an upper floor of his mansion; Shirley (1849); Villette (1852).

Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848)
Wuthering Heights (1847) Catherine is divided between love for her husband and the wild Heathcliff.

Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
Agnes Grey (1845); The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) a study of degeneracy.

Herman Melville (1819-91)
Moby-Dick (1851); Pierre (1852) urban gothic, incest and inherited deception; Benito Cereno (1856) novella on racism; The Confidence Man (1857) "a masterpiece of misanthropy ... a diabolical, perhaps supernatural being whose methods of disguise are never rationally explained" [HBB}; Short stories: Piazza Tales (1856) "touch on vampirism, robots and ghosts" [HBB]

Jules Verne (1828-1905)
Five Weeks in a Balloon 1863; Journey to the Centre of the Earth 1864; From the Earth to the Moon 1865; Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea 1870, features Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus; Around the World in Eighty Days 1873.

Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901)
Atlantis, the Antediluvian World 1882, theorised that Bronze-Age Atlantis was the mother of ancient civilisations through direct transmission from dispersed Atlantean survivors; a very influential thesis.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891)
Founder, with others, of the Theosophical Society 1875. Isis Unveiled 1877 (2 vols), The Secret Doctrine 1888, (2 vols), “providing much raw material for creators of fantasy” [EOF]; Key to Theosophy 1889, “less important” [EOF] ; Nightmare Tales 1892, “unimportant” [EOF].

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson 1832-98)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 1865, Alice follows a rabbit down a hole leading to a world ruled by playing cards and peopled with other strange creatures; Phantasmagoria 1869, a long poem about a friendly ghost; Through the Looking Glass 1871, Alice passes through a mirror into the world beyond which is dominated by chess pieces and other strange folk; The Hunting of the Snark 1876, a long nonsense poem; Sylvie and Bruno 1889, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded 1893.

William Morris (1834-1896)
The Hollow Land Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1856; The Defence of Guinevere and other poems 1858; The Earthly Paradise 1868-70, versions of Greek myth; includes The Life and Death of Jason 1867, ten thousand lines; Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs 1876; a Dream of John Ball and A King's Lesson 1888, mediaeval prophecies of the socialist future; The House of the Wolfings 1889, a Saxon community resisting the Romans; News from Nowhere 1890, a socialist utopia; The Roots of the Mountains 1890; The Story of the Glittering Plain 1890, Hallblithe enters a sort of utopia but something is not right about it and he finds it more difficult to leave; The Wood Beyond the World 1894; The Well at the World's End 1896; posthumous: The Water of the Wondrous Isles 1897; The Sundering Flood 1897.

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens 1835-1910)
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County 1865; The Innocents Abroad 1869; Roughing It 1872; The Gilded Age 1873, [with Charles Dudley Warner]; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876, The Canvasser's Tale 1876, about a man who collects echoes; A Tramp Abroad 1880; The Prince and the Pauper 1882; Life on the Mississippi 1883; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884; The Ghost's Tale 1888; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 1889; The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson 1894; The American Claimant 1892; Tom Sawyer Abroad 1894; Tom Sawyer, Detective 1896; The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg 1900; What is Man? 1906; A Horse's Tale 1906, told partly by Buffalo Bill's horse; Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven 1907; Is Shakespeare Dead? 1910, expounds the theory that Bacon wrote Shakepseare; Posthumous: The Mysterious Stranger (written 1897-1908) published in various forms 1916/69/82, about a 'dream-sprite' that travels at 'thought-speed'; Autobiography 1924; Letters from the Earth 1909 (1962).

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
The Undiscovered Country 1880, rationalised psychic phenomena; The Shadow of a Dream 1890; A Traveler from Altruria 1892, a utopia in the central US; Questionable Shapes 1903; Between the Dark and the Daylight 1907; The Seen and the Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon 1914, a response to Mark Twain's 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' 1910.

A. Square (Edwin Abbott Abbott 1839-1929)
Flatland (1884). A popularisation of mathematical ideas about dimension, with satirical touches.

Fenton Ash (Frank Aubrey 1840-1927)
The Devil Tree of El Dorado 1896; By Airship to Ophir 1910.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
The Haunted Valley Overland Monthly 1871; Cobwebs from an Empty Skull 1873 [as Dod Grile]; Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (In the Midst of Life) 1891; Can Such Things Be? 1893; Fantastic Fables 1899; His stories "range in subject from the American Civil War through lycanthropy, hauntings, vengeful zombies, robots and psychological terror to simple human vileness. ... His trademark is the cruel surprise ending." [HBB] include: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Death of Halpin Frayser, The Middle Toe of the Right Foot (the avenging dead); Moxon's Master (a chess-playing automaton kills its maker); The Damned Thing (creatures which cannot be detected by human senses); One Summer Night (premature burial); An Inhabitant of Carcosa (agoraphobia); A Watcher by the Dead. The Cynic's Word Book (The Devil's Dictionary) 1906/11.

Henry James (1843-1916)
The Portrait of a Lady 1881; The Turn of the Screw Colliers Weekly 1898, cited by literary critics as the first example of an 'unreliable narrator' - the tale is open to varied interpretations - (filmed, very differently, as The Innocents 1961, and The Nightcomers 1971); The Wings of the Dove 1902; The Golden Bowl 1904. The Jolly Corner.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
Reteller of folk and fairy tales: The Blue Fairy Book 1889, and eleven more volumes, of different colours, up to 1910; Arabian Nights Entertainments 1898; The Nursery Rhyme Book 1897.

Bram Stoker (Abraham Stoker 1847-1912)
Dracula 1897; The Jewel of Seven Stars 1903 possibly the best 'curse of the mummy' stories; Dracula's Guest 1914.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1886. Scientist Dr J experiments with drugs to separate his good and evil aspects with tragic consequences.

Mary E(leanor) Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)
Some 200 stories, but only about 12 fantasy. A Humble Romance 1891; A New England Nun 1891; Silence 1898; The Wind in the Rosebush 1903, includes: Louella Miller (ideal Victorian wife is serial killer / psychic vampirism). Several posthumous selections (1971/74/91/92).

F(rancis) Marion Crawford (1854-1909)
Doctor Claudius 1883; The Upper Berth The Broken Shaft 1886 (1894); Khaled 1891; The Witch of Prague 1891; Cecilia 1902; Nightmare Ship ?; Posthumous: Wandering Ghosts (Uncanny Tales) 1911; The Dead Smile 1986.

J(ames) G(eorge) Frazer (1854-1941)
The Golden Bough 1890, two vols; 1900, 3 vols; 1911-15, 12 vols; 1922 abridged edition. Encyclopedic survey of ethnographic literature. Rational, comparative view of primitive customs, myth, magic and religion.

Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde 1854-1900)
The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890. DG sells his soul to evil Lord Henry Wotton to keep his youth and beauty, but his portrait by good Basil Hallward, whom he murders, reveals his true state.

Marie Corelli (Mary Mills or Mackay 1855-1924)
A Romance of Two Worlds 1886; Vendetta 1886; Thelma 1887; Ardath 1889; The Soul of Lilith 1892; Barabbas 1893; The Sorrows of Satan 1895; The Mighty Atom 1896; The Master Christian 1900; Temporal Power 1902.

L. Frank Baum (Lyman Frank Baum 1856-1919)
Mother Goose in Prose 1897; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 1900 and 14 more titles in the same vein. Filmed 1939.

J.-H. Rosny senior (1856-1940) Belgium
Navigators of the Infinite 1925 "story of a human expedition to Mars and its attempts to save the Martians from their evolutionary successors" [E.James].

Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
Dawn 1884, The Witch's Head 1884, King Solomon's Mines 1885, Explorers Sir Henry Curtis, and Captain John Good RN engage hunter Allan Quatermain and native Umbopa to guide them to the lost land of the Kukuanas. Umbopa turns out to be the rightful king. The usurper Twala is killed in single combat with Curtis. Guided to the diamond mines by the witch doctor Gagool they are trapped underground but escape. The lost land is sealed off from European influence. Allan Quatermain 1887, Curtis and Good return to Africa and engage the services of Quatermain again. They reach the lost land of Zu-Vendis via an underground river. It is ruled by two queens, fair Nyleptha and dark Sorais, who through jealousy starts a civil war but is defeated and kills herself. She: A History of Adventure 1887, When Leo Vincey comes of age he receives heirlooms that reveal his duty to avenge the murder of his ancestor Kallikrates. With his guardian Horace Holly he goes to Africa and reach the underground realm of Kor ruled by She-who-must-be-obeyed, Ayesha, who has the secret of eternal life. She recognises Leo as the reincarnation of Kallikrates whom she killed in a fit of passion. She offers Leo immortality if he will enter the Fire of Life, but when she enters the fire she ages, reverts to ape-like form and dies. Eric Brighteyes 1891, Nada the Lily 1892, Montezuma's Daughter 1893, Ayesha 1905, Marie 1912, Child of Storm 1913, Finished 1917, She and Allan 1921, Wisdom's Daughter 1923. His main theme is contact of intrepid adventurers with lost tribes and civilisations (influenced by his friend J.G.Frazer), mostly in African settings (but also Iceland and Mexico).

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
The Sherlock Holmes stories: A Study in Scarlet 1887; The Sign of Four 1890; The Adventures ... 1892; The Memoirs ... 1894; The Hound of the Baskervilles 1902; The Return ... 1905; The Valley of Fear 1915; His Last Bow 1917; The Case Book ... 1927. Professor Challenger stories: The Lost World 1912; The Poison Belt 1913; The Land of Mist 1926. He also wrote historical novels that he considered his best work: Micah Clarke 1889; The White Company 1891; Sir Nigel 1906.

Charlotte Anne Perkins (1860-1935); married surnames: Stetson 1884-94, Gilman 1902-35.
The Yellow Wallpaper 1892 “With a menacingly sinister simplicity this story explores the prison cage created by male good intentions for the narrator, whose treatment for nervous indisposition eventually leads her to become herself the creeping figure she sees in the wallpaper of her barred room.” [HGL]. Herland 1915. [FBB] Writer on feminist issues.

M. R. James (Montague Rhodes James 1862-1936)
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary 1904, includes: Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book; Lost Hearts; The Mezzotint; The Ash-Tree; Number 13; Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad; More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary 1911, includes: The Tractate Middoth; The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral; Martin's Close; Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance; A Thin Ghost, and Others 1919; includes: The Residence at Whitminster; The Five Jars 1922; A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost Stories 1925 also includes: A Neighbour's Landmark; A View from a Hill; Collected Ghost Stories 1931; numerous posthumous collections / selections have appeared.

A(rthur) C(hristopher) Benson (1862-1925)
The Hill of Trouble 1903; The Isles of Sunset 1904; The Child of the Dawn 1912; Basil Netherby 1926; Posthumous: When the Door is Shut 1986, ghost stories written as 'B'. The Bensons, AC, EF and RH, were brothers, their father Edward White Benson (1829-1896) being Archbishop of Canterbury.

Anthony Hope (Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins 1863-1933)
The Dolly Dialogues 1894; The Prisoner of Zenda 1894, the primal Ruritanian romance: Rupert Rassendyl, an Englishman holidaying in Ruritania, proves to be the double of the king, who is kidnapped on the eve of his coronation; Rupert of Henzau 1898.

W(illiam) W(ymark) Jacobs (1863-1943)
His short horror stories, published among more humorous work, include; The Brown Man's Servant, in The Skipper's Wooing 1897; The Interruption, in Sea Urchins 1898; Jerry Bundler, in Light Freights 1901; The Monkey's Paw, In the Library, The Well, in The Lady of the Barge 1902; The Toll House, in Sailor's Knots 1909; The Three Sisters, in Night Watches 1914.

Arthur Machen (Arthur Llewellyn Machen 1863-1947 - pronounced 'macken')
The Great God Pan 1894 "the secret of things is too shocking for the human mind to accept" [HBB]; The Three Impostors 1895; The House of Souls 1906 includes: The Inmost Light; The Novel of the Black Seal; The Novel of the White Powder; The Red Hand; The White People; [HBB] The Hill of Dreams (1907) "about the aura of a terrifying past which surrounds a Roman fort" [CGL]; The Angel of Mons, The Bowmen, and Other Legends of the War 1915; The Terror: A Fantasy 1917; The Children of the Pool, and Other Stories 1936. Machen's stories have appeared in various editions with confusingly different contents.

A(braham Grace) Merritt (1864-1943)
The Moon Pool 1919; The Metal Monster 1920; The Ship of Ishtar 1926, 'purest fantasy'; Seven Footprints to Satan 1928; The Face in the Abyss 1931; Dwellers in the Mirage 1932; Burn, Witch, Burn! 1933; Creep, Shadow! 1934; Posthumous: The Fox Woman 1946; The Black Wheel [with Hannes Bok] 1947; Rhythm of the Spheres 1948; The People of the Pit 1948.

(Joseph) Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
The Phantom Rickshaw and other tales 1888/1890; The Jungle Book 1894; Just So Stories (jv) 1902; They includes 'With the Night Mail' 1905; Puck of Pook's Hill 1906; Rewards and Fairies 1910; Debits and Credits 1926. J. Brunner (ed) The Science Fiction of Rudyard Kipling (UK 1992).

Robert W(illiam) Chambers (1865-1933)
The King in Yellow 1895 the title refers to a suppressed play “which seems to call down a strange doom on anyone who reads it” [HBB]. Makes use of Ambrose Bierce's ‘Carcosa’ and ‘Hali’. The Maker of Moons 1896; The Mystery of Choice 1897; In Search of the Unknown 1904; The Tree of Heaven 1907; The Danger Mark 1909; The Slayer of Souls 1920; also posthumous collections.