H.P. Lovecraft was pretty thorough in his survey The Supernatural Horror in Literature, but he did not possess a crystal ball. He was limited to the works he had access to – which were surprisingly many. But there was no way he could have predicted which forgotten authors would re-emerge in the light of the second half of the century. Authors like the neglected master, J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Lovecraft mentions no Le Fanu works, seems oblivious to the greatest horror writer since Poe. That was how far Le Fanu had fallen by 1927. It would take M.R. James’ collection of Le Fanu’s horror tales, Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales (1923), to rekindle interest in the Irish master. H.P.L. missed this volume, or never had time to revise his essay if he later found out about it.
Read the rest:
