BOOKS AND EBOOKS...

OWN ALL THREE VOLUMES OF TALES OF TERROR!

TALES OF TERROR: THE SUPERNATURAL POEM SINCE 1800, SUPPLEMENT 1. Evil never dies, and neither do the poets who dwell in the shadowland of Gothic gloom and supernatural horror. This treasury of supernatural-themed poems is a supplement to Brett Rutherford’s anthology series, Tales of Terror. Inspired by Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon chronicles, the medieval tale of a bad bishop eaten by rats, the lore of the shape-shifter incubus known as Puck, the German ghost-ballad of “Lenore,” and the vision of a frenzied witches’ sabbath, Gothic poets have mined mythology and history to clothe ancient terrors in new language. The 96 poems selected for this anthology come from the United States, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Peru, and Colombia. Treasures to be found in this volume include the tale of Siegfried and the dragon, a succubus in a World War I battlefield, The Grim Reaper’s Dance of Death, alluring and fatal cemetery specters, and an avenging revenant — plus ghosts, witches, vampires, were-ravens and dreads that cannot be named. Among the 41 writers featured are Goethe, Rossetti, Hugo, Gautier, Cawein, Holland, Longfellow, Kipling, Southey, Marquis, Browning, Rutherford, Todhunter, Vanderbeck, and Wagner.

Highlights include the translation of Bürger’s “Lenore” made by Dante Gabriel Rossetti at age 16; new translations of classic French poems of terror by Gautier and Hugo; poems based on the “Dance of Death” engravings of Hans Holbein; a selection of supernatural poems by Madison Cawein, “the American Keats;” newly rediscovered poems by American Gothic great Barbara A. Holland; selections another nearly-forgotten poet, Fannie Stearns Davis; and new translations of landmark dark poems from 19th-century Spain and Latin America.

For the scholar of the Gothic, this volume supplements the huge collection already assembled in the four preceding volumes of Tales of Wonder and Tales of Terror. The book also includes a cumulative index and bibliography for the entire series.

Yogh & Thorn Books (The Poet's Press). This is the 295th publication of The Poet’s Press. Published August 2021. Paperback, 300 pages, 6 x 9 inches. ISBN 9798458966542. $19.95. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon.

TALES OF TERROR, VOLUME 2

TALES OF TERROR: THE SUPERNATURAL POEM SINCE 1800. VOLUME 2.

“The Goblins will get you if you don’t watch out!”
Terrifying Poems of Ghosts, Monsters and Cosmic Terror
From the 1890s to the Present

This annotated edition of 176 supernatural-themed poems is the second part of a modern sequel to Matthew Gregory Lewis’s famous 1801 poetry anthology, Tales of Wonder. As might be expected, several of the best-known horror writers who were also poets are here, including H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Frank Belknap Long. But surprises abound as ghosts, goblins, fairies, monsters, and cosmic doom escape the pens of poets from the United States, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, and Germany. Treasures to be found in this volume include the lore of The Flying Dutchman, arctic werewolves, an octopus-woman, a rampaging Sphinx, malevolent fairies, house ghosts, a painting fatal to look upon, Santa Claus’s evil cousin, the Phantom of the Opera, mad scientist Nikola Tesla,  “women scorned” with revenge in mind — plus the inevitable sea serpents, Gorgons, vampires, and the hungry slime mold that ate Providence, Rhode Island. This volume samples the best supernatural-themed poems from the 1890s to about 1930, and then leaps forward to offer over a hundred pages of Gothic works by contemporary poets working in a variety of styles.
For the poetry lover, and for the fan of supernatural literature, this book is a year-round Halloween treat of entertaining and alarming poems to read aloud — bedtime stories for very bad children. For the scholar of the Gothic, it presents an intriguing array of poems that range from overtly entertaining Gothic narratives, to works that employ the devices of the Gothic for other ends, social, political, or personal. The book also includes a cumulative bibliography of source materials on the supernatural and Gothic in poetry.

Poets included in this anthology are:

• THOMAS HARDY
• EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
• WALTER CHALMERS SMITH
• CLINTON SCOLLARD
• JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
• MADISON CAWEIN
• THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES
• STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
• WALTER DE LA MARE
• LIONEL PIGOT JOHNSON
• JAMES ELROY FLECKER
• HAROLD MONRO
• JOHN DRINKWATER
• WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
• KATHERINE TYNAN
• JOSEH PLUNKETT
• CATHAL O'BYRNE
• PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL
• ALICE FURLONG
• OSCAR WILDE
• FRANCIS LEDWIDGE
• LEWIS SPENCE
• CARL SPITTELER
• CHARLES DAWSON SHANLY
• WILLIAM WILFRED CAMPBELL
• HENRY KENDALL
• SAMUEL SLOPER
• RICHARD WAGNER/li>
• SIR JOHN COLLLINGS SQUIRE
• ROBERT GRAVES
• ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS
• HOWARD PHILIPS LOVECRAFT
• FRANK BELKNAP LONG
• CLARK ASHTON SMITH
• BARBARA A. HOLLAND
• JOEL ALLEGRETTI
• CLAUDIA DOBKINS-DIKINIS
• SHIRLEY POWELL
• BRETT RUTHERFORD
• PIETER VANDERBECK
• JACK VEASEY
• SCOTT THOMAS
• JACOB RABINOWITZ

Published May 2016. 6 x 9 inches, paperback. 348 pages. ISBN 0-922558-84-1, $19.95. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon. CLICK HERE to order the PDF ebook via Payhip.

RETURN TO TOP

COMPLETE YOUR COLLECTION WITH VOLUME 1!

TALES OF TERROR: THE SUPERNATURAL POEM SINCE 1800. VOLUME 1.

Terrifying Supernatural Poems and Ballads by Coleridge, Shelley, Scott, Byron, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Poe, Longfellow, Heine, Baudelaire, Hugo, Pushkin and others.

This annotated edition of 65 memorable supernatural-themed poems is a modern sequel to Matthew Gregory Lewis's famous 1801 poetry anthology, Tales of Wonder. Treasures in this volume include two translations of scenes from Goethe’s Faust by Coleridge and Shelley; supernatural verses and ballads gleaned from Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels; Shelley’s supernatural poems, both juvenile and mature; Longfellow sharing ghost stories from The Song of Hiawatha, and fierce legends from Norse myth and history; all of the overtly supernatural poems of Edgar Allan Poe; Robert Browning’s famed “Pied Piper of Hamelin”; Christina Rossetti’s delicious “Goblin Market”; and a feast of shuddery French, Russian, and German poems in translation from Hugo, Heine, Gautier, Baudelaire, Pushkin and Sologub. For the poetry lover, and the fan of supernatural literature, this book is a year-round Halloween treat of entertaining and alarming poems to read aloud — bedtime stories for very bad children. For the scholar of the Gothic, the volume presents an intriguing array of poems that range from overtly entertaining Gothic narratives, to works that employ the devices of the Gothic for other ends, social, political or personal. The book also includes an annotated bibliography of source materials on the supernatural and Gothic in poetry.

This series is designed to be continuous with our two-volume edition of the Monk Lewis anthology, Tales of Wonder.

314 pages, illustrated. The 213th publication of The Poet's Press/ Yogh & Thorn Books. 6 x 9 inches, paperback. ISBN 0-922558-80-9 $19.95. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon. Or, CLICK HERE to order and download the PDF ebook via Payhip.

A REVIEW OF VOLUME ONE OF THIS SERIES

Tales of Terror is a continuation of a project begun at the end of the eighteenth century by Matthew Gregory Lewis with Tales of Wonder (1801). The latter anthology, edited by the notorious author of The Monk (1796), proved to be a milestone of Romantic poetry and a bellwether of the Gothic. Lewis did yeoman’s work in collecting a wide range of horror ballads, including original and traditional works, adaptations, translations, and even parodies of the Gothic. Sir Walter Scott and Robert Southey contributed supernatural verses, and many important contemporaries, including Shelley (and therefore his successors) fell strongly under its influence.

In 2012, Brett Rutherford's own edition of Tales of Wonder (also from Poet’s Press) offered reliable texts of the poems, added extensive annotations, and documented the provenance (e.g., folklore) of Lewis’s selections. Popular balladry, with its strong basis in local legends, was the emphasis of the first volume; and this collection takes up the thread of that tradition. As such, the material in Tales of Wonder and Tales of Terror represents the antecedent of modern supernatural fiction.

There are few more qualified to undertake such an effort as this: Rutherford is a distinguished neo-Romantic poet and scholar whose areas of specialty include Gothic, the supernatural, and classical mythology. … The book is well designed, and an excellent bibliography is provided. lt is to be followed shortly by Tales of Terror: The Supernatural Poem Since 1800, Volume Two, thus completing the venture begun by “Monk” Lewis in 1797. lt will be a boon to both readers and critics to have a complete chronological record of supernatural poetry with uniform layout and editorial concept. There can be no real study of a genre such as supernatural fiction until accurate texts and representative works are easily accessible to scholars for detailed analysis and study; and this effort will undoubtedly supply the needed platform for such work, in addition to providing an entertaining and engrossing read for long after midnight. — Stephen Mariconda, Spectral Realms #4, Winter 2016.

BACK TO CATALOG MAIN PAGE

Version 24 February 20, 2024.