title: Supernatural Horror in Literature
author: Howard Phillips Lovecraft
description: This is a lively and opinionated historical essay on supernatural literature written during 1924 through 1927. Indispensable to horror fans (even for those uninterested in <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Lovecraft%2c%20H.%20P./${0}">H. P. Lovecraft</a>'s fiction) for its superb plot summaries and subjective assessments, the book is a short history of horror from folk tales, ballads and myths of the Middle Ages, through the Gothic novel, Victorian ghost story, and American "pulp" writers. It is especially good on <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Poe%2c%20Edgar%20Allan/${0}">Edgar Allan Poe</a>, <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Hawthorne%2c%20Nathaniel/${0}">Nathaniel Hawthorne</a>, <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Machen%2c%20Arthur/${0}">Arthur Machen</a>, and <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Hodgson%2c%20William%20Hope/${0}">William Hope Hodgson</a>, and includes Lovecraft's views on what makes a good horror story. <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Bleiler%2c%20E.%20F./${0}">E. F. Bleiler</a>, renowned scholar of supernatural fiction, provides the introduction.
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  # The Shadow Over Innsmouth
  
  
  ## Howard Phillips Lovecraft
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  **Published:** 1931  
  
  
  **Categorie(s):** Fiction, Horror, Short Stories  
  
  
  **Source:** Wikisource
  
  
  
  
  
  **About Lovecraft:**  
  
  
  Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of fantasy,
  
  
  horror and science fiction. He is notable for blending elements of
  
  
  science fiction and horror; and for popularizing "cosmic horror":
  
  
  the notion that some concepts, entities or experiences are barely
  
  
  comprehensible to human minds, and those who delve into such risk
  
  
  their sanity. Lovecraft has become a cult figure in the horror
  
  
  genre and is noted as creator of the "Cthulhu Mythos," a series of
  
  
  loosely interconnected fictions featuring a "pantheon" of nonhuman
  
  
  creatures, as well as the famed Necronomicon, a grimoire of magical
  
  
  rites and forbidden lore. His works typically had a tone of "cosmic
  
  
  pessimism," regarding mankind as insignificant and pow