The following is an introductory and brief list of recommended reading for any devotee of weird literature. It is also highly subjective and incomplete. Nevertheless, I feel the works below are representative and outstanding works from the genre of weird literature. Most were used as primary sources for the material on this web site—reference them for further reading. Selections range widely, including some works of science fiction, fantasy, poetry, etc., where I feel the recommendation is warranted.
Where I have cited specific editions of any works, it is due either to limited publication, or the fact that I feel they are superior versions (sometimes due to illustrations, authenticity, introductions, etc.). If you have trouble tracking down any of the editions I name, please contact me via email and I'd be glad to assist you.
- Lucius Apuleius
- The Golden Ass (or Metamorphosis)
- Charles Baudelaire
- Les Fleurs du Mal [The Flowers of Evil]
- Petits Poèmes en Prose
- Peter Beagle
- The Last Unicorn (Ballantine Books, NY; 1968)
- Greg Bear
- Blood Music (Ace Science Fiction Books, NY; 1985)
- William Beckford
- Vathek (annotated; Oxford University Press, Great Britain; 1970)
- w/ Odilon Redon, illustrator: Vathek (Creation Books, London; 2000)
- Stephen Vincent Benét
- Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benét: Poetry (Farrar & Rinehart, NY; 1942)
- John Betancourt (editor)
- Best of Weird Tales (Barnes & Nobles, NY; 1995)
- Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (Barnes & Noble Books, NY; 1997)
- Ambrose Bierce
- The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce (University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska; 1984)
- Algernon Blackwood
- Best Ghost Stories (Dover Publications, NY; 1973)
- The Best Supernatural Tales of Algernon Blackwood (Causeway Books, NY; 1973)
- The Centaur (Arno Press, NY; 1976)
- The Complete John Silence Stories (Dover Publications, NY; 1997)
- Dudley and Gilderoy: A Nonsense (Dutton Books, NY; 1929)
- The Empty House
- The Listener and Others
- Shocks (E.P. Dutton & Co., NY; 1936)
- Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (Peter Nevill, London; 1949) (Castle Books; 1974)
- Robert Boyer/Kenneth Zahorski (editor); James Cagle (illustrator)
- Dark Imaginings: a Collection of Gothic Fantasy (Dell Publishing, NY; 1978)
- Orson Scott Card
- The Changed Man (TOR Books, NY; 1992)
- Cruel Miracles (TOR Books, NY; 1992)
- Ender's Game (TOR Books, NY; 1986)
- Flux (TOR Books, NY; 1992)
- Monkey Sonatas (TOR Books, NY; 1992)
- Robert Spencer Carr
- Beyond Infinity (Dell Publishing, NY; 1950)
- Robert W. Chambers
- The Yellow Sign and Other Stories (Chaosium; 2000)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Selected Poems (Gramercy Books, NY; 1996)
- w/ Gustave Dore, illlustrator: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Dover Publications, NY; 1970)
- J. A. Cuddon (editor)
- The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (Penguin Books, NY; 1984)
- Roald Dahl (editor)
- Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, NY; 1983)
- Colin de la Mare
- They Walk Again (E.P. Dutton & Co.; 1931)
- Walter de la Mare
- Short Stories 1895-1926 (Giles de la Mare Publishers, London; 1996)
- Guy de Maupassant
- The Dark Side (Carroll & Graf, NY; 1989)
- Marquis de Sade; Margaret Crosland (editor)
- The Passionate Philosopher (Peter Owen Publishers, London; 1991)
- August Derleth (editor)
- Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre (Arkham House, WI; 1947)
- The Night Side (Rinehart and Co., NY; 1947)
- Who Knocks? (Arkham House, WI; 19??)
- Lord Dunsany
- 51 Tales
- The Book of Wonder
- The Charwoman's Shadow (Ballantine, NY 1926)
- The Complete Pegana (Chaosium; 1998)
- Five Plays (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston; 1920)
- w/ Sidney Sime, illustrator: Gods, Men and Ghosts (Dover Publications, NY; 1972)
- The Hashish Man (Manic D Press, San Francisco; 1996)
- The King of Elfland's Daughter (Ballantine, NY; 1924)
- The Sword of Welleran
- Time and the Gods (contains the complete Time and the Gods, The Book of Wonder, The Sword of Welleran, and The Last Book of Wonder; Millenium/Victor Gollancz, London; 2000)
- E.R. Eddison
- The Worm Ouroboros
- Euripedes
- The Bacchae
- Hans Heinz Ewers; Mary Hottinger (translator); Angel Flores (editor)
- 19th Century German Tales: "The Black Spider" (Doubleday Books; 1959)
- Theophile Gautier; Lafcadio Hearn (translator)
- Collected Works of Theophile Gautier (Walter J. Black, NY; 1928)
- One of Cleopatra's Nights (Wildside Press, NJ; 1999)
- One of Cleopatra's Nights and Other Fantastic Romances (Brentano's, NY; 1906)
- Brothers Grimm; Arthur Rackham (illustrator)
- Fairy Tales (Alfred A. Knopf, NY; 1992)
- Terry Hale (editor); Liz Heron/Terry Hale (translator)
- The Dedalus Book of French Horror: the 19th Century (Dedalus Ltd., Cambs, UK; 1998)
- Lafcadio Hearn
- w/ Yasumasa Fujita, illustrator: Kwaidan (Dover Publications, NY; 1968)
- Ben Hecht; Anthony Angarola (illustrator)
- Fantazius Mallare
- Kingdom of Evil (Harvest/HBJ Books, NY; 1978)
- Frank Herbert
- Dune (Chilton Books, PE; 1965)
- William Hope Hodgson
- The House on the Borderland (Carroll & Graf Publishers, NY; 1983)
- The Night-Land
- E.T.A. Hoffman
- The Best Tales of Hoffman (Dover Publications, NY; 1967)
- Homer
- Iliad
- Odyssey
- Joris-Karl Huysmans
- w/ Keene Wallis, translator: Là-Bas [Down There] (Albert & Charles Boni, NY; 1924) (Dover Publications, NY; 1972)
- A Rebours [Against the Grain] (Dover Publications, NY; 1969)
- M.R. James
- Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (Dover Publications, NY; 1971)
- Stephen Jones et. al. (editors)
- Horror: 100 Best Books (Carroll & Graf, NY; 1988)
- S.T. Joshi (editor)
- Great Weird Tales (Dover Publications, NY; 1999)
- T.E.D. Klein
- The Ceremonies (Bantam Books, NY; 1984)
- Henry Kuttner
- The Best of Henry Kuttner (Ballantine Books, NY; 1975)
- David Lindsay
- A Voyage to Arcturus (Ballantine Books, NY; 1963)
- H.P. Lovecraft
- At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Arkham House, WI; 1965)
- The Doom That Came to Sarnath (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (with foreword; Ballantine, NY; 1970) (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- The Outsider and Others (Arkham House, WI; 19??)
- The Tomb and Other Tales (Panther Books, London; 1965) (Del Rey, NY 1971)
- w/ et. al.: The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (Carroll & Graf Publishers, NY; 1970)
- Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (two volume set; Ballantine Books, NY; 1969) (Del Rey, NY; 1990)
- George MacDonald
- At the Back of the North Wind (Airmont Publishing, NY; 1966)
- w/ Jessie W. Smith, illustrator: At the Back of the North Wind (Books of Wonder/Morrow, NY; 1989)
- The Complete Fairy Tales (Penguin Books, NY; 1999)
- w/ Maurice Sendak, illustrator: The Golden Key (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, NY; 1967)
- w/ Craig Yoe, illustrator: The Gray Wolf and Other Fantasy Stories (Eerdman’s Publishing, MI; 1980)
- w/ Craig Yoe, illustrator: The Light Princess and Other Fantasy Stories (Eerdman’s Publishing, MI; 1992)
- Lilith (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Michigan; 2000)
- Phantastes (Schocken Books, NY; 1982)
- The Princess and Curdie (Puffin Books, NY; 1994)
- w/ Arthur Hughes, illustrator: The Princess and the Goblin (Puffin Books, NY; 1964)
- Arthur Machen
- A Fragment of Life (Tartarus, East Sussex, UK; 19??)
- w/ Austin Osman, illustrator: The Great God Pan (Creation Press, London; 1973)
- The Hill of Dreams (Hobgoblin Press, RI; 1997)
- Ornaments in Jade
- The Three Impostors (Everyman Books, London; 1995)
- Christopher Marlowe
- Dr. Faustus (The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus)
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (four volume set; Viz Communications, San Francisco; 1995-1997)
- Edward Mornin (editor)
- Three Eerie Tales from 19th Century Germany (Frederick Ungar Publishing, NY; 1975)
- William Morris
- The Well at the World's End
- The Wood Beyond the World (Dover Publications, NY; 1972)
- Eugene O'Neill
- Long Day's Journey Into Night
- Ovid
- Metamorphoses
- Edgar Allan Poe
- The Raven and Other Poems
- Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
- Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Franklin Library Press; 1979)
- Tales of Mystery (Longriver Press, NJ; 1976)
- Saki (H.H. Munro)
- Sredni Vashtar and Other Stories (Dover Publications, NY; 1995)
- The Complete Short Stories of Saki (Viking Press, NY; 1942)
- The Unrest Cure and Other Beastly Tales (Prion Books, London; 2000)
- M.P. Shiel
- The Lord of the Sea (Souvenir Press, London; 1981)
- The Purple Cloud (Gregg Press, MA; 1977)
- Xelucha and Others (Arkham House, WI; 1975)
- Clark Ashton Smith
- The Book of Hyperborea (Necronomicon Press, RI; 1996)
- The City of the Singing Flame (Pocket Books, NY; 1981)
- w/ Steve Behrends, editor: Strange Shadows (Greenwood Press, CT: 1989)
- Tales of Zothique
- Sophocles
- Antigone
- Oedipus Rex [Oedipus the King]
- George Sterling
- Lilith
- Selected Poems (Henry Holt and Co., NY; 1923)
- The Testimony of the Suns
- A Wine of Wizardry
- Algernon Charles Swinburne
- Atalanta in Calydon (1865)
- Poems and Ballads (1866)
- Songs Before Sunrise
- Song of Italy
- Swinburne’s Collected Poetical Works: Volume I (William Heinemann Ltd., London; 1927)
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Selected Poems (Penguin Books, NY; 1991)
- J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Lord of the Rings (four volume set; Ballantine, NY; 1932-1965)
- Mark Valentine
- Arthur Machen (bibliography; Poetry Wales Press, Wales; 1995)
- Jules Verne
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Herst & Co., NY; 19??)
- Villiers de l’Isle Adam; Hamish Miles (translator)
- Sardonic Tales (Contes Cruels) (Alfred A. Knopf, NY; 1927)
- Virgil
- Aeneid
- Donald Wandrei
- Don't Dream (Fedogan & Bremer; 1997)
- Various Authors/Editors
- The Dunwich Cycle (Chaosium; 1995)
- The Hastur Cycle (Chaosium; 1993)
- H.P. Lovecraft's Book of Horror (Barnes & Nobles; 1993)
updated 2/28/02
© 2002 Gordon Au