Dark Fantasy Handbook

Precursors of Dark Fantasy

These classic works are not themselves classified as Dark Fantasy, but may have similar themes or be known influences on later works within the Dark Fantasy genre. They may sometimes be more Fantasy or more Horror, and may also have influenced other Speculative Fiction (sub)genres.

Homer's The Odyssey (8th Century BC)

Sophocles' Theban Plays (circa 497 – 405 BC)

Beowulf (8th-11th century)

Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy (circa 1308)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th Century)

Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)

Shakespeare works, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Macbeth, and Hamlet (1564-1616)

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Edgar Allen Poe works, including The Raven and Fall of the House of Usher (1809-1849)

Grimm's Fairy Tales/Children's and Household Tales (1812)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818)

John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819)

Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820)

Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala (1858)

Richard MacDonald's Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858)

J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1871)

Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Guy de Maupassant's Le Horla (1887)

James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888)

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

William Morris' The Wood Beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)

Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams (1907)

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis (1915)

Any other works that should be on this list?

Read one of these and interested in submitting a review?