Description

Book Synopsis
Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein; but have you heard of Margaret Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier? Have you read the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era? Or the stories of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, whose writing influenced H.P. Lovecraft? Monster, She Wrote shares the stories of women past and present who invented horror, speculative, and weird fiction and made it great. You ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V.C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Coltor, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). And each profile includes a curated reading list so you can seek out the spine-chilling tales that interest you the most.

Trade Review
2019 Bram Stoker Award® Winner for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction
2020 Locus Award Winner for Non-Fiction
A 2019 Booklist Editors’ Choice in Arts and Literature

“I was elated when Monster, She Wrote arrived in my mailbox. It is a book I have been waiting to read for a long time...Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson deserve a standing ovation.”—Danielle Trussoni for The New York Times Book Review

“A great gift for anyone fascinated with genre writing.”—SFX Magazine

“Presented in a breezy, conversational style that makes it easy to gobble up whole sections at a time...Anyone from casual fans to horror historians will benefit from reading this important book.”—Cemetery Dance

“Your necronomicon for all women writing horror.”—Book Riot

“A perfect way to find your next spooky story.”—Tulsa World

“The curatorial quality of a literary anthology, the historical rigor of an academic text, and the pleasure of a picture book.”—Tor.com

“Kröger and Anderson write in consistently engaging prose and display depth and breadth in their knowledge of literary matters. Besides demonstrating great synthetic acuity, they provide the fruits of original scholarship.”—Locus

“Straddling the divide between highly useful reference and compulsively readable stories about the writing lives of the women of horror, this book will keep you up all night (one way or another).”—Booklist, starred review

“Inspired not only in the way it explores what the off-kilter, the monstrous and the half-known has meant to women for centuries but also in how it illuminates the often unusual lives of the women who crafted these dark worlds.”—BookPage

“This biographical index will reawaken readers' admiration for established virtuosos of literary terror and inspire curiosity in lesser-known specialists in fictitious fear.”—Publishers Weekly

“An engrossing, eye-opening encyclopedia on the pioneering women who went against convention and broke down barriers to mold the horror fiction genre, thereby inspiring generations of writers and even filmmakers with their works.”—Geeks of Doom

“Unique, fascinating, informative...an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university librar[ies].”—Midwest Book Review

Table of Contents
Introduction

PART ONE: THE FOUNDING MOTHERS
Margaret Cavendish: Mad Madge
Ann Radcliffe: Terror over Horror
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: The Original Goth Girl
Regina Maria Roche: Scandalizing Jane Austen
Mary Anne Radcliffe: Purveyor of Guts and Gore
Charlotte Dacre: Exhibitor of Murder and Harlotry

PART TWO: HAUNTING TALES
Elizabeth Gaskell: Ghosts Are Real
Charlotte Riddell: Born Storyteller
Amelia Edwards: The Most Learned Woman
Paula E. Hopkins: The Most Productive Writer
Vernon Lee: Ghostwriter à la Garçonne
Margaret Oliphant: Voice for the Dead
Edith Wharton: The Spine-Tingler

PART THREE: CULT OF THE OCCULT
Marjorie Bowen: Scribe of the Supernatural
L. T. Meade: Maker of Female Masterminds
Alice Askew: Casualty of War
Margery Lawrence: Speaker to the Spirits
Dion Fortune: Britian’s Psychic Defender

PART FOUR: THE WOMEN WHO WROTE THE PULPS
Margaret St. Clair: Exploring Our Depths
Catherine Lucille Moore: Space Vamp Queen
Mary Elizabeth Counselman: Deep South Storyteller
Gertrude Barrows Bennett: Seer of the Unseen
Everil Worrell: Night Writer
Eli Colter: Keeping the Wild West Weird

PART FIVE: HAUNTING THE HOME
Dorothy Macardle: Chronicler of Pain and Loss
Shirley Jackson: The Queen of Horror
Daphne du Maurier: The Dame of Dread
Toni Morrison: Haunted by History
Elizabeth Engstrom: Monstrosity in the Mundane

PART SIX: PAPERBACK HORROR
Joanne Fischmann: Recipes for Fear
Ruby Jean Jensen: Where Evil Meets Innocence
V. C. Andrews: Nightmares in the Attic
Kathe Koja: Kafka of the Weird
Lisa Tuttle: Adversary for the Devil
Tanith Lee: Rewriting Snow White

PART SEVEN: THE NEW GOTHS
Anne Rice: Queen of the Damned
Helen Oyeyemi: Teller of Feminist Fairy Tales
Susan Hill: Modern Gothic Ghost Maker
Sarah Waters: Welcome to the Dark SОance
Angela Carter: Teller of Bloody Fables
Jewelle Gomez: Afrofuturist Horrorist

PART EIGHT: THE FUTURE OF HORROR AND SPECULATIVE FICTION
The New Weird: Lovecraft Revisited and Revised
The New Vampire: Polishing the Fangs
The New Haunted House: Home, Deadly Home
The New Apocalypse: This Is the End (Again)
The New Serial Killer: Sharper Weapons, Sharper Victims

Glossary
Notes
Suggested Reading
Index
Acknowledgments

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered

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    A Hardback by Lisa Kröger, Melanie Anderson

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      View other formats and editions of Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered by Lisa Kröger

      Publisher: Quirk Books
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 17/09/2019
      ISBN13: 9781683691389, 978-1683691389
      ISBN10: 1683691385

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein; but have you heard of Margaret Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier? Have you read the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era? Or the stories of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, whose writing influenced H.P. Lovecraft? Monster, She Wrote shares the stories of women past and present who invented horror, speculative, and weird fiction and made it great. You ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V.C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Coltor, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). And each profile includes a curated reading list so you can seek out the spine-chilling tales that interest you the most.

      Trade Review
      2019 Bram Stoker Award® Winner for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction
      2020 Locus Award Winner for Non-Fiction
      A 2019 Booklist Editors’ Choice in Arts and Literature

      “I was elated when Monster, She Wrote arrived in my mailbox. It is a book I have been waiting to read for a long time...Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson deserve a standing ovation.”—Danielle Trussoni for The New York Times Book Review

      “A great gift for anyone fascinated with genre writing.”—SFX Magazine

      “Presented in a breezy, conversational style that makes it easy to gobble up whole sections at a time...Anyone from casual fans to horror historians will benefit from reading this important book.”—Cemetery Dance

      “Your necronomicon for all women writing horror.”—Book Riot

      “A perfect way to find your next spooky story.”—Tulsa World

      “The curatorial quality of a literary anthology, the historical rigor of an academic text, and the pleasure of a picture book.”—Tor.com

      “Kröger and Anderson write in consistently engaging prose and display depth and breadth in their knowledge of literary matters. Besides demonstrating great synthetic acuity, they provide the fruits of original scholarship.”—Locus

      “Straddling the divide between highly useful reference and compulsively readable stories about the writing lives of the women of horror, this book will keep you up all night (one way or another).”—Booklist, starred review

      “Inspired not only in the way it explores what the off-kilter, the monstrous and the half-known has meant to women for centuries but also in how it illuminates the often unusual lives of the women who crafted these dark worlds.”—BookPage

      “This biographical index will reawaken readers' admiration for established virtuosos of literary terror and inspire curiosity in lesser-known specialists in fictitious fear.”—Publishers Weekly

      “An engrossing, eye-opening encyclopedia on the pioneering women who went against convention and broke down barriers to mold the horror fiction genre, thereby inspiring generations of writers and even filmmakers with their works.”—Geeks of Doom

      “Unique, fascinating, informative...an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university librar[ies].”—Midwest Book Review

      Table of Contents
      Introduction

      PART ONE: THE FOUNDING MOTHERS
      Margaret Cavendish: Mad Madge
      Ann Radcliffe: Terror over Horror
      Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: The Original Goth Girl
      Regina Maria Roche: Scandalizing Jane Austen
      Mary Anne Radcliffe: Purveyor of Guts and Gore
      Charlotte Dacre: Exhibitor of Murder and Harlotry

      PART TWO: HAUNTING TALES
      Elizabeth Gaskell: Ghosts Are Real
      Charlotte Riddell: Born Storyteller
      Amelia Edwards: The Most Learned Woman
      Paula E. Hopkins: The Most Productive Writer
      Vernon Lee: Ghostwriter à la Garçonne
      Margaret Oliphant: Voice for the Dead
      Edith Wharton: The Spine-Tingler

      PART THREE: CULT OF THE OCCULT
      Marjorie Bowen: Scribe of the Supernatural
      L. T. Meade: Maker of Female Masterminds
      Alice Askew: Casualty of War
      Margery Lawrence: Speaker to the Spirits
      Dion Fortune: Britian’s Psychic Defender

      PART FOUR: THE WOMEN WHO WROTE THE PULPS
      Margaret St. Clair: Exploring Our Depths
      Catherine Lucille Moore: Space Vamp Queen
      Mary Elizabeth Counselman: Deep South Storyteller
      Gertrude Barrows Bennett: Seer of the Unseen
      Everil Worrell: Night Writer
      Eli Colter: Keeping the Wild West Weird

      PART FIVE: HAUNTING THE HOME
      Dorothy Macardle: Chronicler of Pain and Loss
      Shirley Jackson: The Queen of Horror
      Daphne du Maurier: The Dame of Dread
      Toni Morrison: Haunted by History
      Elizabeth Engstrom: Monstrosity in the Mundane

      PART SIX: PAPERBACK HORROR
      Joanne Fischmann: Recipes for Fear
      Ruby Jean Jensen: Where Evil Meets Innocence
      V. C. Andrews: Nightmares in the Attic
      Kathe Koja: Kafka of the Weird
      Lisa Tuttle: Adversary for the Devil
      Tanith Lee: Rewriting Snow White

      PART SEVEN: THE NEW GOTHS
      Anne Rice: Queen of the Damned
      Helen Oyeyemi: Teller of Feminist Fairy Tales
      Susan Hill: Modern Gothic Ghost Maker
      Sarah Waters: Welcome to the Dark SОance
      Angela Carter: Teller of Bloody Fables
      Jewelle Gomez: Afrofuturist Horrorist

      PART EIGHT: THE FUTURE OF HORROR AND SPECULATIVE FICTION
      The New Weird: Lovecraft Revisited and Revised
      The New Vampire: Polishing the Fangs
      The New Haunted House: Home, Deadly Home
      The New Apocalypse: This Is the End (Again)
      The New Serial Killer: Sharper Weapons, Sharper Victims

      Glossary
      Notes
      Suggested Reading
      Index
      Acknowledgments

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