A Look into the Life of Horror Writer Dennis Etchison

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Featured Horror Books

Possibly one of the most well-received writers and unfortunately, one of the most recently deceased within the horror writing community, Dennis Etchison made his waves in the world of writers at large. As an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction, he has been hailed as, “one hell of a fiction writer,” by his peer in horror, Stephen King. Etchison himself described his work as, “rather dark, depressing, almost pathologically inward fiction about the individual in relation to the world,” which is fair–writing horror is a pretty grim business. It could be argued that The Viking-Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, which described him as, “the most original living horror writer in America,” really did recognize the genius and inspirational talent of him as a writer. At the end of this month, we’re coming up on the first anniversary of the death of this highly regarded writer of horror fiction. So join us as we celebrate the life and work of Dennis Etchison for our Dead Author Dedication of May.

Growing Up…

Born Dennis William Etchison on March 30, 1943 in Stockton, California and he grew up as an only child when World War II was still ravaging the globe. He, therefore, didn’t have any men in his home and as a result believed he was spoiled greatly as a child where he spent most of his time without normal exposure to children his own age. It’s said that this sense of isolation from his peers, as well as the need to interact with society, was reflected later as parts of the themes of many of his work. His father regularly took him to attend shows at the Olympic Auditorium where he developed a fascination in the fight between good and evil–and gave him the ability as a young boy to become a fan of wrestling as a sport.

During his teenage years he wrote for his school papers and was a decidedly good writer for his age, having discovered Ray Bradbury and emulated his style before he had developed his own. This was the time that he began writing short stories, but upon submitting them for publication was rejected every time–that is until he remembered Ray Bradbury, who had suggested that a writer should look to a market that would be the least likely to publish their work. After heeding the advice of his source of inspiration, he was promptly accepted for publication in a gentlemen’s magazine entitled Escapade.

Career

While we’re going to focus more on the literary career of Dennis Etchison in our next installment of the Dead Author Dedication for the month of May, we feel it’s important to recognize here some of the highlights of his achievements. Dennis Etchison had a prolific writing career when it came to short story fiction, something utterly unheard of for an author who was actually quite popular during their lifetime–considered a king of anthologies, he began with publications of his short stories in the 1960s.

At UCLA he sought a higher education in the 1960s, Etchison studied film and eventually became highly knowledgable on the subject; he wrote various screenplays, many of which were never produced. He even became a consultant to Stephen King for his non-fiction volume Danse Macabre (1981) and also wrote for television. In his expansive five-decade career, his range included short stories, movie novelizations, original novels, anthologies, essays, editorials, and radio work.

Not surprisingly, Etchinson also served as the President of the Horror Writers Association from 1992 to 1994. At the turn of the century, in 2002, he adapted almost one hundred episodes of the original Twilight Zone television series for a CBS radio series which was hosted by Stacy Keach. Over the course of his career, he won the British Fantasy Award three times for fiction, as well as two World Fantasy Awards for anthologies he was responsible for editing. In 2017, Etchison was recognized by the Horror Writers of America when they bestowed the honor of the Bram Stoker lifetime achievement award upon him.

Much of Etchison’s work can be found under his pen name, Jack Martin, One thing that Etchison can be credited for aside from all of his other achievements is his excessive humility when regarding his own work. Inspiration can be found from his relatability for aspiring writers and we think that this can be summarized by one quote in particular.

I know a short story or a book that I’ve written much better than anybody else in the world. I’ve read it a hundred times. And just because it’s published doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect. You don’t write in a vacuum. You write on a schedule, professionally, and something may be published that I know is flawed. I understand the weaknesses of the work better than anybody else.

I could give you an annotated version of one of my stories that would point out not only the references and the origins of the lines and thoughts, but what I was trying to do – what I wished there were more of, what I now think there’s too much of. After you’ve written it and set it aside, you can come back to it and you see it in a different light. So I now look back at any story of mine more than a couple of years old and it does not look good to me. I could go through it and make it better, but I don’t do that. It represents the best I could do at that time, under those circumstances, and it’s representative of the person I was. I am embarrassed by some of the early stories, which continue to come back in reprint anthologies around the world.

It’s nice to be paid for work I did in my teens! But I can look at it as if someone else had written them and say, “My God! Is he aware of how these words look on the page?” I have a more acute sense of style than I did then; a better understanding of myself and human relationships. Two years from now I’ll look back at the present stories and be appalled. But it’s like life: what you do is the best you can do on that day. You have to finish your job at the end of the day and say, given the circumstances, this was the best that I could do. But tomorrow’s a new day. I can try to do better.

Dennis Etchison on his own writing.

Throughout his career Etchison gave back to the next generation of aspiring writers, by teaching classes in creative writing at his alma mater, UCLA. The most admirable trait of this horror master, is that he inspired many to write down their stories and accept that our flaws as writers actually contribute to our ability to evolve and improve.

Death

Although his cause of death has still been relatively unreported upon, we do know that Etchison was reported to have died during the night on May 28, 2019, at the age of 76. This was a tremendous blow to the modern horror community, as it lost one of the most influential modern writers who brought originality and life to such an exciting genre of fiction.

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A Lovecraftian Life and Death

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Lifestyle

Known as the Father of Cosmic Horror, H.P. Lovecraft only lived for forty-six short years. What he was able to accomplish in his lifetime, however, was enough to change the tides of an entire genre.

A Visionary from an Early Age

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in the late summer of 1890, to Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft and Winfield Scott Lovecraft, in Providence, Rhode Island. As a child of three, his father suffered from a nervous breakdown and was sent to Butler Hospital, where he remained in residence for five years until his death in the summer of 1898. Unaware of his father’s mental condition, Lovecraft was told that his father was paralyzed and comatose, but surviving medical records show that his father actually died of paresis—a form of neurosyphilis.

Following the death of his father, Lovecraft was brought up by his mother, two aunts, and grandfather—who had him reciting poetry at two, reading at three, and writing at six or seven years of age, having recognized his advanced intelligence. By the age of five, he had proven his penchant for the creative, fantastical, and mythological, eventually using these influences to inspire his own literary works. His oldest surviving work came when he was a young boy of seven, having paraphrased the Odyssey into rhyming verse in his 1897, “The Poem of Ulysses.” His grandfather played a large role in Lovecraft’s strange gothic sense of fantasy, encouraging him to pursue his weird flights of fantasy into the realm of horror.

Due to numerous childhood afflictions, including some instances of psychological troubles, Lovecraft’s attendance at school was never consistent—he spent much of his youth studying independently, favoring chemistry and astronomy over all else. As far as works of fiction, Edgar Allan Poe served as the inspiration for much of Lovecraft’s dark and imaginative creations. Despite his diminished ability to socialize, he was still able to create and maintain a number of significant friendships with his peers when he attended Hope High School, through his self-published hectograph journals. These journals, The Scientific Gazette (1899–1907) and The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy (1903–07) garnered him his peer’s encouragement to write outside of his home. Unfortunately, in 1908 Lovecraft suffered from a nervous breakdown and never received his diploma. His inability to graduate high school and be admitted into Brown University would be a source of great shame to Lovecraft later in life

This breakdown led Lovecraft to become somewhat of a hermit for several years—exacerbated by the death of his grandfather and their consequential financial ruin—he would stay up late studying, reading, and writing poetry, then sleeping late into the day. Even though he managed to publish articles on astronomy in several newspapers, Lovecraft went through a difficult time after losing his childhood home, as well as the compulsive love-hate relationship he had with his mother, so he regularly contemplated suicide.

From Isolation to Notoriety

Emerging from his need for isolation in 1913, like an internet troll emerges when they see something online that drives them absolutely crazy, Lovecraft wrote an entire letter in verse to Fred Jackson as an affront. He joined the United Amateur Press Association in 1914, which is where his amateur journalism career began, leading him to launch his self-published magazine The Conservative in 1915. It would be safe to say that these opportunities launched Lovecraft’s entire career out from within the pit of his own self-pity.

H.P. Lovecraft (1915)
H.P. Lovecraft (1915)

“In 1914, when the kindly hand of amateurdom was first extended to me, I was as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can be… With the advent of the United I obtained a renewal to live; a renewed sense of existence as other than a superfluous weight; and found a sphere in which I could feel that my efforts were not wholly futile. For the first time I could imagine that my clumsy gropings after art were a little more than faint cries lost in the unlistening world.”

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

It only took two more years of his life before he once again delved into his fictional worlds—in the summer of 1917, Lovecraft easily produced “The Tomb,” as well as “Dagon,” which were two shorter stories that he owed to his passion for fiction. The dark edgy tales of Edgar Allan Poe and fantasy tales of Irish author Lord Dunsany, which inspired some of his earlier fiction pieces.

I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the deserted tomb of the Hydes, an old and exalted family whose last direct descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth.

The Tomb”, June 1917 by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

It was around this time that his mother’s own mental and physical deterioration began to really affect her and after her own nervous breakdown in 1919, she was admitted to Butler Hospital—the same hospital Lovecraft’s father had been committed to and subsequently died in. Only two years later a failed operation caused the death of his mother and in spite of his devastation, Lovecraft recovered enough to meet his future wife a few weeks later. In 1923, the horror magazine Weird Tales paid Lovecraft for his stories, which was his first paid gig as a writer. When he married Sonia Greene in 1924, they moved to New York for two years, but the marriage soon failed and Lovecraft returned to Rhode Island where he began working on his most renowned stories. Just two years after splitting up with his wife, “The Call of Cthulhu,” came out in the Weird Tales magazine, which was the first piece that really helped make a name for Lovecraft as an author of otherworldly horror.

The Death of a Legendary Horror Writer

I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous – that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn’t.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, 1926
Tombstone of H.P. Lovecraft
Tombstone of H.P. Lovecraft

The last decade of his life was spent creating what is now known as his classics, having found a niche for himself as an author of weird horror fiction, and prolific writer-of-letters. The last few years of his life, in particular, were incredibly strenuous for Lovecraft, beginning with the death of one of his aunts in 1932, from there his writing became largely too complex to sell to a normal reader. At this part of his career, he began to attempt a career solely editing, as well as ghostwriting stories, poetry, and non-fiction—no longer even trying to sell his own original creations. The suicide of a close friend brought him depression, but it was ultimately his own incurable illness that would bring Lovecraft’s final days. In the winter of 1936, Lovecraft’s intestinal cancer caused him pain that increased on a daily basis and eventually he had taken himself to the hospital where he died five days later, on March 15, 1937.

Like many other underappreciated artists of his age, Lovecraft has gained a far greater following after death than he ever saw during his lifetime. He’s been the inspiration for writers Peter Straub, Stephen King, as well as Neil Gaiman—to name a few.

Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.

Stephen King
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Best Horror Coloring Books for Adults

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Best Horror Books Best Of Featured Horror Books

Who said that scary things aren’t for kids? Or that coloring books aren’t for adults? Both of these things are proven dreadfully wrong with the best coloring books inspired by the horror genre. Yes, they’re a thing. Your favorite monsters jump off the page as you color in between the lines and create a ghoulishly gorgeous work of art – all while relieving stress and soothing the mind with a set of crayons as your guide. If you’re looking to unwind and relax after a long day – and need something a bit more abnormal than the typical Netflix and wine – try these horror coloring books for adults to channel your dark side with a bit of creepy color. 

The Beauty Of Horror: A GOREgeous Coloring Book

The Beauty Of Horror: A GOREgeous Coloring Book

This horror coloring book by Alan Robert is one of the most popular on the web, and you’ll see why as you glance into its pages. GOREgeous features “an onslaught of severed heads, monsters, deadly weapons, and skeletal remains” as you “visit burial grounds, the zombie apocalypse, serial killer lairs and gruesome torture chambers.” Their words… cute, right? Invest in this page-turner that has tons of gore-geously good reviews on GoodReads on Amazon, and get that red crayon ready for all the blood, clown noses, and leftover guts. You’re going to need it. 

Horror Coloring Book for Adults : Horror Stress Relieving Illustrations with Scary Monsters, Creepy Scenes, and a Spooky Adventure

Horror Coloring Book for Adults

This horror coloring book isn’t for the faint of heart. You won’t find any “good witches” or soft scares within these black-and-white pages – only the most terrifying and intricate illustrations that will freak you out and frustrate you as you try desperately to color within the lines. Trust us, once you see the complexity of these designs, you’ll see that you’ll need the entire box of crayons. That being said, this horror coloring book is ideal for the artsy scare lover… and you’ll want to stick this art up on your bedroom wall for the most gorgeous horror house on the block.

Zombie Coloring Book

Zombie Coloring Book

Take a break from witches, skeletons, and killer clowns as you go back to basics with a horror staple: zombies. These undead creatures will always have a place in your favorite scary movies and TV shows… and now on your nightstand, too. Choose from 20+ zombie illustrations – ranging from ugly and gross to interesting and a bit cute – and fill them in with your favorite colors to bring life back into your relaxation routine with a few undead monsters. Sure, the title of this book is a mouthful, but Zombie Coloring Book really is an incredible habit for everybody!

Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland Coloring Book 

Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland Coloring Book

Plenty of children’s movies are a lot more creepy once you watch them as an adult, like Alice in Wonderland. Between the Chesire Cat’s scary smile and the Queen of Hearts yelling about beheading children, this classic Disney film is almost as scary as any horror film from the early 2000’s. And it gets even more horrifying with this adult coloring book that features demonic versions of the film’s classic characters. A giant, murderous rabbit is something that you didn’t even know you needed until now, and you can make him any color you like for ultimate nightmare fuel. 

The Beauty of Horror 2: Ghouliana’s Creepatorium Coloring Book

The Beauty of Horror 2: Ghouliana's Creepatorium Coloring Book

It’s pretty rare in the world of horror for the sequel to be just as spooky and stunning as the original – unless we’re talking about horror coloring books for adults. Ghouliana’s Creepatorium has just as many distorted ghosts and scary skeletons as the GOREgeous book that we told you about earlier… and it doesn’t even need to be Halloween to stick these finished illustrations up on your refrigerator. Let loose and embrace your inner artist with these spooky designs that never go out of style… and know that there are plenty more coloring books to try in the The Beauty of Horror lineup. Thanks, Alan Robert!

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Best of Supernatural Horror Comics

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Best Of Best of Comics Comics and Graphic Novels Featured Horror Books

The supernatural holds a strong place in the societal psyche. There aren’t many subjects that are as alluring in terms of the unknown and the extraordinary and also as terrifying. Searching for and approaching the supernatural is exhilarating, but finding it and seeing it is risky business. It’s enticing, spine-tingling, hair-raising, and if you’re reading this, it’s impossible to look away. What better to enjoy the best supernatural horror than in a comic book format?

Witches – check, demons – got em, ghosts – of course. This list of incredible supernatural horror comics demand to be read, and are the greatest reward to those that burn the midnight oil. 

Gideon Falls by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorentino

Gideon Falls Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

Norton Sinclair, a recluse with interesting dumpster theories, and Father Fred, a pastor in Gideon Falls, have otherworldly visions of “the Black Barn.” Each of our leading men has their own riddles to crack, from clues hidden in city litter to sinister small town mysteries, but they both lead them to Gideon Fall’s central omen: the Black Barn, and the trip-fest inside breathe new meaning to ideas of “otherworldly doom.” Definitely one of the best supernatural horror comics out there.

Girl From the Other Side by Nagabe

Girl From the Other Side supernatural horror comic

“The God of Light took everything away from the God of Darkness, changing him into the shape of a hideous monster.” Well, I was hooked. Turns out, victors are not always fair, and the God of Light is no exception. This story follows Shiva, the only human in the Outside, the land of the God of Darkness. She is accompanied by her Teacher and lives among the Outsiders, commanded never to touch Shiva by the Teacher, lest they corrupt her. The mysteries of the Outside and it’s cursed denizens are numerous and devilish, and I loved every bit of it. 

Exorsisters by Ian Boothby and Gisèle Lagacé

Exorsisters Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

These sacred sisters are great for exorcisms on a budget. Coming-of-age stories are great pretenses for horror, and the Harrow sisters grow up averting the end of the world, defeating demon-obsessed boyfriends, and dealing with their mom. The Veronica Mars vibes are pretty high, with a bit of Charmed mixed in. Need I say more?

Redlands by Jordie Bellaire & Vanesa R. Del Rey

Redlands Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

Southern gothic and Southern horror are powerful. I’ve lived in the South for years now, and it has always struck me how it feels like the physical terrain holds the scars of the past, today. Redlands is another incarnation of this great American tradition, starring a coven of witches in a foggy Florida town and the citizens they subjugate. And when those citizens want to make a change, the supernatural exploits in Redlands, Florida, only get worse. 

BPRD by Mike Mignola

BPRD Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

Demon frogs, demon detectives, and the CIA paint the pages of BPRD, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. Mike Mignola’s expanded universe takes place after Hellboy leaves the BPRD, who still have to stop the End of the World as We Know It. Success becomes a very relative term as the story progresses, and the frogs become the least of their problems. Mike Mignola’s universe barely gives our heroes any breaks, and when it does–wait, does it ever?

Harrow County by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook

Harrow County Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

What started as Countless Haints on Cullen Bunn’s website became Harrow County, a supernatural fairy tale told in a southern gothic style to hainting success. Emmy, a peaceful country girl, starts to hear things in the woods; monsters, ghosts, and shadows, speaking to her like old friends. An old oak tree at the edge of the farm calls out in her dreams, and a witch’s curse may come true, or so it seems. 

Fatale by Deon Taylor

Fatale Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

Femme fatale’s are classic, badass, and electric protagonists. Fatale’s femme du jour is Josephine, an enchantress from the 1930s, alive in the present day, enchanting as ever. Interestingly, this attraction doesn’t always go in her favor, and the men around her typically pay the price. Struggling with her “gift” and battling a cult obsessed with her seeming-immortality are all in a days work for Jo, and her escapades keep her world, and our heads, spinning. 

Rachel Rising by Terry Moore

Rachel Rising Supernatural Horror Comic Cover

The trick to a good murder is making sure the dead stay dead. Rachel Beck has other plans. After waking in a shallow grave, apparently strangled, and with no memory of her death, she begins trying to solve her attempted murder. What she finds is witchcraft and demons, hellbent on destroying her town. Demons and the undead typically mean one thing: the end is near. 

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Horror Comic Cover

This teenage witch may seem familiar, and so too do the names and faces, but the stakes are more than a bit higher, and the spells much darker. Sabrina Spellman’s coming-of-age story collides with catty witches, dead parents, and satanic rituals. Such is the life of any half-witch high schooler. 

Nocturnals by Dan Brereton

Nocturnals Supernatural horror comic cover

The Nocturnals is a great of example of an ensemble supernatural comic, written and illustrated by Dan Brereton and published by Dark Horse Comics. We start with Doc Horror, the patriarch of the patchwork Horror family, a gang of supernatural outcasts, with extraordinary abilities. Our protagonists fight against supernatural enemies as well as corrupt corporations in a fictional California city, Pacific City. Here, we love horror, we love the supernatural, and we love ensembles. Nocturnals does it all.

These are my personal Tales of the Crypt, ladies and gentleman. These are the best supernatural horror comics I have read yet. They’ve kept me up at night–reading and otherwise. I love to hear from you all, so please comment and tell us where we screwed up or uncover that hidden gem only you have discovered. Discourse is the foundation of democracy, and the difference between seventh and eighth is a big deal, okay?! If you like supernatural horror comics you will also love cosmic horror comics.

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Beyond Frankenstein—Mary Shelley’s Literary Successes

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Featured Horror Books Horror Mystery and Lore Women in Horror

The tragedy of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is that, despite having one of the most famous horror stories of all time, her other work is virtually unknown. Her other two novels, aside from Frankenstein, were actually strange and unique in their own way—keep reading to learn more about the roads Mary Shelley paved for the literary community.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Shelley’s first and most notorious novel was started when she was still a teenager, in 1816, at age 18. Female writers around the world, myself included, are grateful for her contribution to literature, even though she published initial additions anonymously when she was twenty in London in 1818. Her name didn’t actually appear on the publication until the second edition was published in Paris in 1821.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

What is incredible about this book is not just that it was written by a teenager, or that it was written by a woman, but that it was written by a woman from the perspective of a young male scientist. This story arose from her travels through Europe in 1815 while she traveled along the Rhine in Germany. Eleven miles away from what is considered Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before her visit a mad alchemist conducted various experiments. She continued her travels across Geneva, Switzerland—which was also used as a setting for much of the novel. Shelley and her traveling companions had incredibly controversial conversations that ranged from the occult to galvanism—this of course was around the time that Luigi Galvani was conducting his experiments with his frog galvanoscope.

The legend of how Shelley came up with her idea of this particular novel tells us that Shelley and her traveling companions, most all of them writers, decided to have a contest amongst themselves. They wanted to challenge each other and see, who among them could create the most engaging, terrifying, and outrageous horror story. Initially stumped by the prompt, Shelly thought upon the topic for days until she finally had a dream that would inspire her to write the story of a scientist who created life, only to be horrified by his own creation.

The story of Victor Frankenstein was rather controversial due to the idea of Galvani’s technology and what his experiments meant for the scientific community at the time. So, Shelley portrays Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist as a man pursuing knowledge that lies in the unorthodox, blasphemous fields of secrets yet-to-be-told. Life and death are uncertainties in this story, when Victor creates a sapient creature, one constructed from the pilfered parts of those who have died.

Galvani’s experiments gave the scientific community a lot of ideas about reanimation after death and also launched experimental medical treatments using electricity to cure diseases that were incurable at the time. If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the process that Luigi Galvani used to achieve this ground-breaking discovery about electrical impulses and the nerve system, there are a few YouTubers who decided to replicate the experiment. Enjoy!

The Last Man (1826)

Shelley’s novel The Last Man is an unusual topic for the time during which it arose; originally published in 1826, this book envisions a future Earth—set in the late twenty-first century—that is ravaged by plague and unknown pandemic. It harbors the eery scene of a planet in the throes of apocalypse, where society has degraded to a dystopian nightmare, amidst the ravages of an unchecked and unknowable plague that blankets the globe.

The Last Man

In order to write this particular novel, Shelley spent time sitting in meetings of the House of Commons in order to have a deeper understanding of the inner workings of a Romantic Era political system. As such, she created another first in literature—dystopian apocalyptic visions of the future within the writing community. Due to the insanely new concept of a dystopic world, her novel was suppressed by the literary community at large, as it was a wholly nightmarish idea at the time. It was almost considered prophecy and it wasn’t until the 1960s that the novel resurfaced to the public where it was clearly understood to be a work of fiction.

Mathilda (1959)

Mathilda is one of those books that, if it had been published during Shelley’s lifetime, it might have created another scandal for Mary Shelley—as such her second long work, despite having been written between August 1819 and February 1820, wasn’t published until 1959, well after Shelley’s death. While this isn’t a horror novel, it does provide some insight into the dark and depressed mind of Shelley following the death of two of her children. Their deaths in 1818 and 1819 respectively caused Mary Shelley to distance herself emotionally and sexually from her husband which was an incredible hardship on their marriage.

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The plot of this particular novel dealt with a common theme found in Romance Era novels—incest and suicide, this novel in particular was the narrative of a father’s incestuous love for his daughter. Now you may be thinking—that’s disgusting! And by today’s standards of familial relationships and romantic relationships, you would be correct.

Mathilda tells her story from her deathbed, having barely lived to her twenties, in order to tell the story of her darkest secrets that have led her to such a young demise. She confesses the truth of her isolated upbringing which leads to the ultimate begrudging truth of her emotional withdrawal and inevitable, secluded death. She never names her father, who confesses his incestuous love for her—his confession fuels his decision to commit suicide by drowning.

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