Tell me about the 50's... what do you wish fallout included?
- Thread starter Thrawn
- Start date
APTYP said:
No, if he's talking about gothic novels/stories (novels of horror, novels of terror, Schauerroman (German), roman noir (French)), then the founders of that genre are Walpole (The Castle of Otranto, 1764), Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794), Lewis (The Monk, 1796), Shelley (Frankenstein, 1819) and Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820).
Poe was born in 1809, which is basically in the period that gothic novels and stories were very very popular. He's not regarded as the 'inventor' of that genre, but he is often regarded as the 'inventor' of another genre: the whodunit or the detective story. His tales of ratiocination (Murders in the Rue Morgue, anyone?) are regarded as the first detective stories. Then again, he might have 'invented' the genre, it never made him rich. The most successfull and famous 19th century writer of detective stories is, of course, no one else than Conan Doyle.
battlepoet
First time out of the vault
You are correct, Lovecraft had a number of predecessors, and my statement was made in error. To my knowledge, he was one of the first popular 'pulp' writer of gothic horror, if not the first, at least in the U.S., but that doesn't really validate my error any; the point of it was that he wasn't really a Sci-Fi writer, though. My apologies for misstatement. :>