A Screampunk Bibliography

Hello all! I had a request for a bibliography of the books and stories I discussed in my show “Screampunk: What Victorians Were Scared Of.” Here it is!

Ghosts

“The Botathen Ghost,” 1867, R.S. Hawker. A weird exorcism set in 1665.

“The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth,” 1868, Rhoda Broughton. Well-written tale of unseen horror.

“A Christmas Carol,” 1843, Charles Dickens. Not really horror!

“The Signal-Man,” 1866, Charles Dickens. A railroad worker has a presentiment of death.

“To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt,” 1865, Charles Dickens. A ghost haunts his own murder trial in a very matter-of-fact way.

“The Tomb of His Ancestors,” 1898, Rudyard Kipling. A ghost rides a tiger!

“The Phantom Rickshaw,” 1888, Rudyard Kipling. An English ghost in India.

“By Word of Mouth,” 1886, Rudyard Kipling. Another English ghost in India.

Vampires

“The Vampyre,” 1816, John Polidori. The first aristocratic vampire.

“Varney the Vampyre,” 1847, James Malcolm Rymer or maybe Thomas Peckett Prest. Extremely long penny-dreadful story; the first remorseful vampire.

“Carmilla,” 1872, J. Sheridan Le Fanu. The first readable vampire.

“Dracula,” 1897, Bram Stoker. Dracula!

Mummies

“The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century,” 1827 by Jane Webb. Cheops is reanimated in 2126 and is quite helpful.

“Pharos, The Egyptian,” 1898, Guy Boothby. Undead retribution!

“Lot  No. 249,” 1892, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A man reanimates a mummy and is scolded.

“The Foot of the Mummy,” 1863, Theophile Gaultier. A man uses a mummy’s foot as a paperweight and that’s terrific.

Werewolves

“The Mark of the Beast,” 1890, Rudyard Kipling. The monkey-god Hanuman makes a werewolf, sorta.

“Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf,” 1857, George W.M. Reynolds. Completely bananas story of a harmless werewolf.

Miscellaneous

“Faust,” 1808, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The classic pact story, updated for the 19th century.

“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” 1902, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Evil hellhounds aren’t real.

“The Great God Pan,” 1894, Arthur Machen. Great atmosphere and also a lot of misogyny.

“The Invisible Man,” 1897, H.G. Wells. The consequences of having no accountability.

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson. Who is this foul Edward Hyde?

“The Horla,” 1887, Guy de Maupassant. An early space alien horror.

“Frankenstein,” 1818, Mary Shelley. Frankenstein!