Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction
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Description
Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You’ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today’s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.
Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.
Book Information
Posts
This was a great introduction to Women writers of the horror/gothic/science-fiction genre. I knew about 10% of them and was very excited to find out more about them and to get to know more writers. I added a few reads to me TBR-list thanks to this audio book. The only downside was that the description of the lives of these women were very short and sometimes even sparse. I guess, this is the downturn of adding so many names to the book. However, it is great to have such a compilation to get back to when on the hunt for new reads. I also very liked the introduction and classification of the writers at the beginning of each chapter.
Description
Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You’ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today’s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.
Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.
Book Information
Posts
This was a great introduction to Women writers of the horror/gothic/science-fiction genre. I knew about 10% of them and was very excited to find out more about them and to get to know more writers. I added a few reads to me TBR-list thanks to this audio book. The only downside was that the description of the lives of these women were very short and sometimes even sparse. I guess, this is the downturn of adding so many names to the book. However, it is great to have such a compilation to get back to when on the hunt for new reads. I also very liked the introduction and classification of the writers at the beginning of each chapter.