Supernatural Horror in Literature

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American writer, poet, literary critic and essayist, recognized as one of the greatest writers of horror literature together with Edgar Allan Poe and considered by many to be one of the precursors of Anglo-American science fiction. His works, a contamination between horror, soft science fiction, dark fantasy and low fantasy, have often been described, even by himself, with the term weird fiction (where weird stands for “strange”), being recognized among the main origins of the modern literary genre of the new weird.
Supernatural Horror in Literature is a comprehensive and seminal essay by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, first published in The Recluse in 1927 and revised up to 1934. It is widely considered the finest historical and critical survey of the horror genre, or what Lovecraft often termed the “weird tale”, up to his own time.
Lovecraft, himself a master practitioner of cosmic horror, sought to define the genre’s essence, trace its historical development, and identify its most significant contributors.
Lovecraft begins by establishing a rigorous aesthetic criterion for true supernatural horror. He famously states: «The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown».