Wolf's Complete Book of Terror

by Leonard Wolf (Editor), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson

Illustrations by artists as diverse as Dore, Goya, and Blake and stills from horror films accompany terrifying tales gathered from all corners of the earth, including stores by Baudelaire, Poe, and Kafka

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Fantasy

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[joey]

Monumental is the only word I can up with to describe this diamond in the ruff. This second edition excludes a few stories from the original 1979 publication (like Harlan Ellison's "I Have no Mouth and I must Scream") but includes a few new tales (by Kathe Koja and Joyce Carol Oates). Try to get your hands on the first edition. Where else could you find, in one compendium, such wonderful works as "Axolotl" by Cortázar, "The South" by Borges, "The One Who Walks away from Omelas," LeGuin, "The Tattooer" by Junichiro Tanizaki and Richard Matheson's "Born of Man and Woman," to name only a few.

[Lamprini]

Ο ΑΠΟΛΥΤΟΣ ΤΡΟΜΟΣ!!!!

[robyn]

Wolf comes up with an interesting horror designation that I haven't seen before, as 'wet' vs 'dry.' If you read much horror, you get it; MR James is dry, dry, dry. And Clive Barker is wet, wet, wet.

I think the 'wet' horror in this book is the weakest. And there are a couple of weird inclusions, like the Biblical story of Jael and Sisera; you'd have to work pretty hard to introduce much of a frisson in the story as it stands (the reality is obviously horrifying).

But the bulk of the book is old classics, like The Lottery, It's a Good Life, The Fly. The Yellow Wallpaper. And horror classics are classic for very good reason - because they are AMAZING. More than any other genre, horror has to be masterful to even be good; Wolf did a reasonably good job of selecting material that should and will last.

[Jennifer Gnerlich]

I liked the short stories in the book. Some were so old (1700 and 1800s) that they were a little difficult to get into. But others were classics that I was so glad to be able to read including Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Marquis de Sade, just to name a few. I do like the short story format because it is easy to handle with a big work schedule. Great book to start around Halloween.

[KATHLEEN]

I do not share Wolf's taste, though there are some truly creepy stories in this volume:

The Lottery
It's a GOOD Life
The Squaw

among others. Skip right over The Count de Gernande (gross and violent.)

[Katie Gilmore Pauls]

2.5 rounded up

[Bill Borre]

The Spider is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
The Yellow Wallpaper is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror

[[on hiatus, probably forever] The rockabilly werewolf from Mars]

Some interesting stories, but a few too many poems for my tastes. Notes on the stories to come.

[Benjamin]

I read the 1979 edition of this book, and I'd highly recommend it as a 1st-read, prior to getting acquainted with some of the Black Lizard publisher anthologies, "The Big Book of Ghost Stories", book by Otto Penzler and 'The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published", also edited by Otto Penzler. It's wonderful that fans of what I affectionately call "Gothic" writing have hefty sources to refer to. And the stories themselves are timeless.

[Linda]

Some terrifying stories of the supernatural and some that are so-so.