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 H. P. Lovecraft 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 Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Machen, and William Hope Hodgson, and includes Lovecraft's views on what makes a good horror story.