Quartz Ranks Ten Horror Novels Spanning Two Centuries, From Frankenstein to Mexican Gothic
Quartz has released an unranked compilation of ten unsettling horror novels. It opens with Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), an epistolary work featuring the count mostly in the background. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), initiated in 1816, tells the tale of an eloquent creature forsaken by Victor. In Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959), the presence of a haunting remains unverified, while Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898) leaves the ghostly question unanswered. Stephen King's The Shining (1977) delves into Jack Torrance's struggle with alcoholism, and Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby (1967) generates tension through a Manhattan conspiracy. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971) centers on Father Damien Karras, while Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves (2000) features disconcerting typography. Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic (2020) received the Locus Award, and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) concludes with Robert Neville's realization of being viewed as a monster.
Key facts
- Quartz published an unranked list of ten horror novels spanning more than two centuries
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is epistolary, built from diaries, letters, clippings, telegrams, a ship's log and a phonograph recording
- Mary Shelley began Frankenstein in 1816 at age 18 after Lord Byron proposed a ghost-story contest near Lake Geneva; it appeared anonymously in 1818
- Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House was published in 1959 and never confirms whether the house is haunted
- Henry James published The Turn of the Screw in 1898; Edmund Wilson argued in a 1934 essay that the governess was hallucinating
- Stephen King's The Shining appeared in 1977, set at Colorado's Overlook Hotel; Stanley Kubrick's adaptation followed in 1980
- Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic (2020) won the Locus Award for best horror novel and the 2020 Goodreads Choice horror category
- George Romero credited Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) as the direct inspiration for Night of the Living Dead
Entities
Artists
- Mary Shelley
- Bram Stoker
- Shirley Jackson
- Richard Matheson
- Stephen King
- Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Henry James
- Ira Levin
- William Peter Blatty
- Mark Z. Danielewski
- Lord Byron
- Edmund Wilson
- Stanley Kubrick
- Roman Polanski
- George Romero
- Will Smith
- John Milton
Institutions
- Quartz
- Georgetown University
- Netflix
- Locus Award
- Goodreads Choice Awards
Locations
- Lake Geneva
- Switzerland
- Whitby
- England
- London
- United Kingdom
- Colorado
- Virginia
- Los Angeles
- Mexico City
- El Triunfo
- Mexico
- Washington, D.C.
Sources
- Quartz —