Authors like Edgar Allan Poe

I first discovered Poe my freshman year of high school when I was assigned to read "The Cask of Amontillado." He's been my favorite author ever since. His grasp of language, the atmosphere in his stories, and the psychological themes he touched on all had a big impact on me. I'd never read anything like him before, and little since.

However, I have spend a good amount of time the last few years trying to find authors with a similar style or vibe; authors whose work strikes a similar chord to that of Poe, while still remaining unique. This is what I've come up with so far:

1. Howard Phillips Lovecraft
A lover of Poe himself, Lovecraft is most famous for his horror-sci-fi tales dealing with the so-called "Cthulhu Mythos." Many of Lovecraft's earlier tales are obviously imitations of Poe's work. Short stories like "The Tomb" and "The Outsider" make for a good read, even though it's very clear from whence they draw their inspiration. Lovecraft's prose, like Poe's, is formal and antiquated, but Lovecraft's is often stiffer and, well, not as good. He also had a tendency to pile adjectives on top of each other at an annoying rate. However, these flaws are often absent in the best of his stories. I highly recommend "The Rats in the Walls," "The Music of Erich Zann," "The Call of Cthulhu," "At the Mountains of Madness," and my personal favorite, "The Colour Out of Space." Almost all of his tales can be found at http://www.gordon-fernandes.com/hp-lovecraft/index.html.

2. Lord Dunsany
When most people think of Poe's fiction they think of his more horrific stories, "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "The Fall of the House of Usher," but he also wrote fantasy, detective fiction (a genre he single-handedly created), and satire. Somewhat separate from all these were two strange little stories, Silence - A Fable, and Shadow - A Parable. These tales -- both rich in language and scenery, but with little plot and no real characterization -- carry a feeling of pseudo-mythology, like lost pages from some strange religious text. Over half a century after they were written, an Irish Lord would would vastly expand and improve on this style.

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett a.k.a. Lord Dunsany -- whose life is so interesting I'll avoid mentioning much of it for fear of getting hopelessly sidetracked -- is one of the great forgotten masters of fantasy. He shared Poe's amazing ability with imagery and mood, but unlike Poe, Dunsany focused his energy on dreamlike fantasies set in exotic locations. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that Dunsany's work is among the most beautiful ever written. As Neil Gaiman rightly points out in his foreword to The King of Elfland's Daughter, one can sample almost any line from his best stories and come up with a gem. Here is a particularly short, but poignant, example of his work.

Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with his weariness.

It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of wide floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that had become for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and was of a piece of Eternity.

If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have divided all time in his memory into two equal slabs.

So grey were all things always where he was that if any radiance lingered a moment among the dead, on the face of such a queen perhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it.

It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers. They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. It was neither Charon's duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul why these things might be. Charon leaned forward and rowed.

Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the gods to send no one down from Earth for such a space. But the gods knew best.

Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat shivering on a lonely beach and the great boat pushed off. Only one passenger; the gods knew best. And great and weary Charon rowed on and on beside the little, silent, shivering ghost.

And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that Grief in the beginning had sighed among her sisters, and that could not die like the echoes of human sorrow failing on earthly hills, but was as old as time and the pain in Charon's arms.

Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke, that had been a man.

"I am the last," he said.


No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep.




All his early books are essential and can be read here: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a2685

3. Clark Ashton Smith
Smith was primarily a poet (and a damn good one) but he also wrote fiction to help pay the bills. He's mostly remembered for his bizarre tales of the post-apocalyptic land of Zothique and the imaginary medieval French province of Averoigne. His stories - like his poetry - were imaginative, florid, and richly textured - some would say to a fault. I've always though Smith was pretty uneven; some of his stories are corny and preposterous while others are incredibly beautiful, strange, and unique. He's not for everyone, but those who like purple prose and have a taste for the strange should give his work a try. His fiction, poetry, sculptures, paintings, and biographical information can be found at http://eldritchdark.com/

soon to be added: Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and many more.

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I'm Robby. This blog is for simply for whatever happens to be going through my head at a given moment.