Timeline of Horror Literature
Through History

ca. 2100 BCE	The Epic of Gilgamesh
ca. 750–700 BCE	Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, featuring tales of gods, monsters, magic, a trip to the underworld; Hesiod’s Theogony, with additional descriptions of monstrous and supernatural entities
5th century BCE	Heyday of Greek tragedy in works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, featuring supernaturalism and grisly scenes of physical horror
3rd century BCE	Apollonius Rodius, Argonautica, showing Jason and the Argonauts encountering multiple monsters and supernatural threats
ca. 200 BCE	Plautus, Mostellaria (“The Haunted House”)
1st century CE	Petronius, Satyricon, featuring the first extant account of a werewolf in ancient literature; Ovid, Metamorphoses, with tales of human beings transforming into plants and animals
2nd century CE	Apuleius, Metamorphosis, a.k.a. The Golden Ass, with transformation, witchcraft, and more
ca. 750–1000	Beowulf
12th century	Romance narratives rise to prominence in Europe, featuring many fantastical elements, including ghosts, fairies, werewolves, supernatural transformations, and mysterious castles
14th century	Middle English romances flourish, including tales of women seduced by demons (e.g., Sir Gowther), werewolves (William of Palerne, translated from Old French), and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which teems with supernaturalism and horror
1308–1320	Composition of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, whose second section, Inferno, profoundly shapes Western Christian conceptions of demons, devils, Satan, and hell
1487	Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches)—the most famous (notorious) of the witch-hunting manuals
1572	English translation of Swiss theologian Ludwig Lavatar’s Of ghostes and spirites walking by nyght
1584	Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft
1587	Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
1594	Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night; William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
1597	King James I, Daemonologie
1599	John Marsten, Antonio’s Revenge
1600	William Shakespeare, Hamlet
1605	English translation of French scholar Pierre le Loyer’s A treatise of spectres or straunge sights, visions and apparitions appearing sensibly unto men
1607	Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy; William Shakespeare, Macbeth
1612	Thomas Middleton, The Witch
1621	Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley, The Witch of Edmonton
1623	John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
1634	Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, The Late Lancashire Witches
1667	Publication of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with a profoundly influential depiction of Christian angels, demons, and Lucifer
1681	Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, an apparition narrative arguing for the reality of both biblical/Christian supernaturalism and witches, revenants, and other horrific supernatural beings
1692	Beginning of the Salem witch trials
1693	Publication of Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, focusing on the dangers of witchcraft, and published in the immediate wake of the Salem witch trials
1704	Publication of John Dennis, Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, an essay promoting the terror of the sublime as the most powerful driver of great poetry
ca. 1722–1751	Rise of the so-called Graveyard Poets, who wrote melancholy poetry set in graveyards and reflecting on death and mortality, e.g., Robert Blair’s “The Grave,” Edward Young’s The Complaint: Or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, and Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
1727	Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions
1746	Publication of Antoine Augustin Calmet’s “Dissertations on the Apparitions of Spirits and on the Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia”—an exhaustive study of angels, demons, witchcraft, lycanthropy, and related beings and occult phenomena (and a book of major importance in driving popular fascination with vampires for the next century)
1757	Publication of Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, an essay articulating an aesthetics of death, pain, power, and cosmic immensity that proved hugely influential for subsequent Gothic and horror literature
1764	Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
1774	August Bürger, Lenore
1778	Clara Reeve, The Old English Baron
1781	Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare (painting)
1786	William Beckford, Vathek
1787–1789	Friedrich von Schiller, Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer)
1793	Christian Heinrich Spiess, Petermännchen (The Dwarf of Westerbourg)
1794	Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
1796	Matthew Lewis, The Monk
1797	Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel; Matthew Lewis, The Castle Spectre; Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
1798	Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland, or The Transformation; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
1799	Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly
1801	Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer
1816	Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley hold a ghost story contest while staying together for the summer at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, giving rise to the literary vampire (via Polidori’s “The Vampyre”) and Mary’s Frankenstein
1817	E. T. A. Hoffmann, “The Sand-man”; Lord Byron, Manfred
1818	Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
1819	John Polidori, “The Vampyre”
1820	Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”; Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer
1824	James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
1826	Posthumous publication of Ann Radcliffe’s essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry”
1831	Nikolai Gogol, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka; Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (revised version)
1835	Nikolai Gogol, Mirgorod and Arabesques; Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”
1837	Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales
1838	Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia” and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
1839	J. Sheridan Le Fanu, “Schalken the Painter”; Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
1840	Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
1842	Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni; Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mask of the Red Death” (revised in 1845 as “The Masque of the Red Death”)
1843	Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Conqueror Worm”
1844	Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; Karl Adolf von Wachsmann, “The Mysterious Stranger”
1845	Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
1845–1847	James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, Varney the Vampire (published in installments)
1846	Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
1847	Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Thomas Peckett Prest, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber (first published as The String of Pearls); Count Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
1848	The young Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, report hearing “spirit raps,” leading to the explosive birth of Spiritualism, which will play a significant role in much supernatural horror fiction
1851	Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
1855	Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story”
1857	Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil)
1859	Edward Bulwer-Lytton, “The Haunted and the Haunters”; Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White; Fitz-James O’Brien, “What Was It?”
1866	Charles Dickens, “The Signal-man” (first published as “No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal-man”)
1869	Comte de Lautréamont, The Songs of Maldoror; J. Sheridan Le Fanu, “Green Tea”
1872	J. Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly (includes Carmilla)
1881	Robert Louis Stevenson, “Thrawn Janet”
1882	The Society for Psychical Research is founded in London.
1884	J. K. Huysmans, A rebours (Against the Grain); Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”
1885	Rudyard Kipling, “The Phantom ’Rickshaw”; Robert Louis Stevenson, “Olalla”
1886	F. Marion Crawford, “The Upper Berth”; H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1887	Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”
1888	Rudyard Kipling, The Phantom ’Rickshaw, and Other Tales
1889	W. C. Morrow, “His Unconquerable Enemy”
1890	Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Ring of Thoth”; Rudyard Kipling, “The Mark of the Beast”; Vernon Lee, Hauntings; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
1891	Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Death of Halpin Frayser”; Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles; J. K. Huysmans, Là-Bas (published in English as Down There or The Damned); Henry James, “Sir Edmund Orme”; Rudyard Kipling, “The Recrudescence of Imray”
1892	Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” Arthur Conan Doyle, “Lot No. 249”
1893	Ambrose Bierce, “The Damned Thing” and Can Such Things Be?
1894	George du Maurier, Trilby; Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan and the Inmost Light
1895	Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow; Arthur Machen, The Three Impostors (with “The Novel of the Black Seal”)
1896	H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
1897	Arthur Machen, The Hill of Dreams; Richard Marsh, The Beetle; Bram Stoker, Dracula; H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man
1898	Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
1899	Vernon Lee, “The Doll”
1900	Lafcadio Hearn, “Nightmare-Touch”; Robert Hichens, “How Love Came to Professor Guildea”
1901	Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles; M. P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud
1902	W. W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw”
1903	Bram Stoker, The Jewel of Seven Stars
1904	Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things; M. R. James, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (with “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”); Arthur Machen, “The White People”
1905	F. Marion Crawford, “For the Blood Is the Life”
1906	Leonid Andreyev, “Lazarus”; Algernon Blackwood, The Empty House
1907	Algernon Blackwood, The Listener and Other Stories (with “The Willows”)
1908	Algernon Blackwood, John Silence: Physician Extraordinary; F. Marion Crawford, “The Screaming Skull”; Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider”; William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland
1910	Algernon Blackwood, “The Wendigo”; Walter de la Mare, The Return; Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera; Edith Wharton, “Afterward”
1911	Hanns Heinz Ewers, Alraune; M. R. James, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (with “Casting the Runes”); Oliver Onions, Widdershins (with “The Beckoning Fair One”); Saki, “Sredni Vashtar”; Bram Stoker, The Lair of the White Worm
1912	E. F. Benson, The Room in the Tower; Walter de la Mare, “The Listeners”; William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land
1913	William Hope Hodgson, Carnacki, the Ghost Finder
1913–1914	Gustav Meyrink, The Golem
1914	Saki, “The Open Window”
1915	Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”
1918	Sax Rohmer, Brood of the Witch Queen
1919	Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”; Stefan Grabiński, The Motion Demon; W. F. Harvey, “The Beast with Five Fingers”
1920	Maurice Renard, The Hands of Orlac
1921	A. E. Coppard, “Adam & Eve & Pinch Me”
1922	Walter de la Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”; H. P. Lovecraft, “The Music of Erich Zann”
1923	Walter de la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories (with “Seaton’s Aunt” and “Out of the Deep”); launch of Weird Tales
1924	H. P. Lovecraft, “The Rats in the Walls”
1925	Franz Kafka, The Trial; Edward Lucas White, “Lukundoo”; Not at Night, edited by Christine Campbell Thomson
1926	Cynthia Asquith, The Ghost Book; D. H. Lawrence, “The Rocking-Horse Winner”; H. P. Lovecraft, “The Outsider”
1927	F. Scott Fitzgerald, “A Short Trip Home”; H. P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, “Pickman’s Model,” “The Colour out of Space,” and Supernatural Horror in Literature
1928	Frank Belknap Long, “The Space Eaters”; H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”; Montague Summers, The Vampire, His Kith and Kin; H. R. Wakefield, They Return at Evening (with “He Cometh and He Passeth By”); Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery, and Horror, edited by Dorothy Sayers
1929	Frank Belknap Long, “The Hounds of Tindalos”; H. P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”; Montague Summers, The Vampire in Europe
1930	William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”; H. P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness”
1931	Conrad Aiken, “Mr. Arcularis”; Clark Ashton Smith, “The Return of the Sorcerer”
1932	Conrad Aiken, “Silent Snow, Secret Snow”; Jean Ray, “The Shadowy Street”; launch of Charles Birkin’s Creeps anthology series
1933	Guy Endore, The Werewolf of Paris; H. P. Lovecraft, “The Dreams in the Witch House”; Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo-Sathla”
1934	Dennis Wheatley, The Devil Rides Out
1936	H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, “The Shadow over Innsmouth” “The Shadow Out of Time,” and “The Haunter of the Dark”
1937	H. P. Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”; Edith Wharton, Ghosts (published posthumously)
1938	John W. Campbell, “Who Goes There?”; Robert E. Howard, “Pigeons from Hell”; Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
1939	H. P. Lovecraft, The Outsider and Others—the first published collection of Lovecraft’s fiction, from the newly founded Arkham House; founding of Unknown magazine
1940	John Collier, “Evening Primrose”; L. Ron Hubbard, Fear; Theodore Sturgeon, “It”; Jack Williamson, Darker Than You Think
1941	Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost”; H. P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (published posthumously)
1942	Clark Ashton Smith, Out of Space and Time
1943	Robert Bloch, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”; Fritz Leiber, Conjure Wife; Jean Ray, Malpertuis
1944	Theodore Sturgeon, “Killdozer”; Jack Williamson, Darker Than You Think: Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Herbert Wise and Phyllis Fraser; Sleep No More, edited by August Derleth
1945	Robert Bloch, The Opener of the Way; Elizabeth Bowen, The Demon Lover; August Derleth (and H. P. Lovecraft), The Lurker at the Threshold
1946	Ray Bradbury, “The Homecoming”
1947	Ray Bradbury, Dark Carnival; rebranding of Educational Comics as Entertaining Comics by William Gaines, soon to publish Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, and Vault of Horror
1948	Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”; Theodore Sturgeon, “The Perfect Host”
1949	Fritz Leiber, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”
1950	Richard Matheson, “Born of Man and Woman”
1951	Robert Aickman, We Are for the Dark; Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man; John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
1952	Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds”
1953	Sarban, The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny
1954	Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
1955	Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers; Flannery O’Connor, “Good Country People”
1955	Ray Bradbury, The October Country (revised version of 1947’s Dark Carnival)
1957	John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos
1959	Robert Bloch, Psycho; Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; the first Pan Book of Horror Stories, edited by Herbert van Thal; The Macabre Reader, edited by Donald A. Wollheim
1961	Richard Matheson, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”; Ray Russell, “Sardonicus”
1962	Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes; Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle; Ray Russell, The Case Against Satan
1963	Manly Wade Wellman, Who Fears the Devil?
1964	Robert Aickman, Dark Entries (with “Ringing the Changes”); Ramsey Campbell, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants; Creepy #1, from Warren Publishing
1966	Eerie #1, from Warren Publishing
1967	Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby; Colin Wilson, The Mind Parasites; Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
1968	Robert Aickman, Sub Rosa (with “The Cicerones”); Fred Chappell, Dagon; launch of the magazine Weirdbook; creation of modern zombie archetype in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead
1971	William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist; T. E. D. Klein, “The Events at Poroth Farm”; Richard Matheson, Hell House; Thomas Tryon, The Other; The Seventh Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, edited by Robert Aickman
1973	J. G. Ballard, Crash; Ramsey Campbell, Demons by Daylight; Harlan Ellison, “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs”; Robert Marasco, Burnt Offerings; Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home
1974	James Herbert, The Rats; Stephen King, Carrie; Brian Lumley, Beneath the Moors and The Burrowers Beneath; Karl Edward Wagner, “Sticks”
1975	J. G. Ballard, High-Rise; Harlan Ellison, Deathbird Stories; James Herbert, The Fog; Stephen King, ’Salem’s Lot; establishment of the World Fantasy Award at the first World Fantasy Convention
1976	Ramsey Campbell, The Doll Who Ate His Mother; John Farris, The Fury; Russell Kirk, “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding”; Ray Russell, Incubus; Frights, edited by Kirby McCauley
1977	Gary Brandner, The Howling; Stephen King, The Shining; Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness; Joyce Carol Oates, Night-Side; Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff
1978	Stephen King, The Stand and Night Shift; Whitley Strieber, The Wolfen; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Hotel Transylvania; launch of the Shadows horror anthology series, edited by Charles L. Grant
1979	Ramsey Campbell, The Face That Must Die and “Mackintosh Willie”; Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber; Charles L. Grant, The Hour of the Oxrun Dead; George R. R. Martin, Sandkings; David Morrell, The Totem; Peter Straub, Ghost Story; Thomas Tessier, The Nightwalker
1980	Jonathan Carroll, The Land of Laughs; Suzy McKee Charnas, The Vampire Tapestry; Jack Ketchum, Off Season; Russell Kirk, “The Watchers at the Strait Gate”; Michael Shea, “The Autopsy”; Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley
1981	Dennis Etchison, The Dark Country; Thomas Harris, Red Dragon (the novel that introduced Hannibal Lecter); Stephen King, Cujo and Danse Macabre; Robert R. McCammon, They Thirst; Sandy Peterson, The Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game); Whitley Strieber, The Hunger; F. Paul Wilson, The Keep; launch of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine, edited by T. E. D. Klein, Michael Blaine, and Tappan King
1982	Thomas Tessier, Shockwaves
1983	William Peter Blatty, Legion (sequel to The Exorcist); Robert Bloch, Psycho 2; Susan Hill, The Woman in Black; Black Water, edited by Alberto Manguel; Fantastic Tales, edited by Italo Calvino; The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, edited by E. F. Bleiler
1984	Clive Barker, The Books of Blood; Octavia E. Butler, “Bloodchild”; Stephen King and Peter Straub, The Talisman; T. E. D. Klein, The Ceremonies; Alan Moore takes over DC’s Swamp Thing; John Skipp and Craig Spector, The Light at the End; S. P. Somtow, Vampire Junction
1985	Clive Barker, The Damnation Game; Stephen King, Skeleton Crew; T. E. D. Klein, Dark Gods; Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer; Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat; Ray Russell, Haunted Castle: The Complete Gothic Tales of Ray Russell; Dan Simmons, Song of Kali
1986	Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart; Stephen King, It; Brian Lumley, Necroscope; Lisa Tuttle, A Nest of Nightmares; “splatterpunk” coined by David J. Schow
1987	Clive Barker, Weaveworld; Stephen King, Misery; Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Michael Shea, Polyphemus and Fat Face; Whitley Strieber, Communion; founding of the Horror Writers Association (as Horror Writers of America) and establishment of the Bram Stoker Award Dean Koontz, Watchers
1988	Clive Barker, Cabal; Neil Gaiman, Sandman (launch of comic book series); Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs; Anne Rice, The Queen of the Damned; John Skipp and Craig Spector, The Scream; Prime Evil, edited by Douglas A. Winter; revival of Weird Tales by George H. Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt, and Darrell Schweitzer
1989	Neil Gaiman, Sandman #1; Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door; Joe R. Lansdale, On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks; Patrick McGrath, The Grotesque; Anne Rice, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned; Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort
1990	Robert Bloch, Psycho House; Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart; Thomas Ligotti, “The Last Feast of Harlequin”; Robert R. McCammon, Mine; Anne Rice, The Witching Hour; Lovecraft’s Legacy, edited by Robert Weinberg and Martin H. Greenberg; Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, edited by Paul Sammon
1991	Clive Barker, Imajica; Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho; Thomas Ligotti, Grimscribe: His Lives and Works; Alan Moore, From Hell (issue 1); launch of the Dell Abyss line of horror paperbacks; founding of the International Gothic Association
1992	Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls; Tanith Lee, Dark Dance and Heart Beast; Kim Newman, Anno Dracula
1993	Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood; Ramsey Campbell, Alone with the Horrors; Stefan Grabiński, The Dark Domain; Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
1994	Elizabeth Hand, Waking the Moon; Jack Ketchum, “The Box”; Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba Ho-Tep; Thomas Ligotti, Noctuary and The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales; Joyce Carol Oates, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque
1995	Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie; establishment of the International Horror Guild Award (which will run to 2008)
1996	Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse; Ramsey Campbell, The House on Nazareth Hill; Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
1997	Thomas Tessier, Fogheart
1998	Tom Holland, The Sleeper in the Sands; Caitlín R. Kiernan, Silk
1999	Michael Cisco, The Divinity Student; Thomas Harris, Hannibal; H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (first of three Penguin Classics volumes that help to canonize Lovecraft as a major American author); Peter Straub, Mr. X; launch of the journal Gothic Studies
2000	Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves; Stephen King, The Bullet (published online as a freely downloadable eBook for the first week); Sarah Langan, The Keeper; Patrick McGrath, Martha Peake; China Miéville, Perdido Street Station; Jeffrey Thomas, Punktown
2001	Tananarive Due, The Living Blood; Neil Gaiman, American Gods; Charlaine Harris, Dead Until Dark (first novel in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, later adapted for television as True Blood); Stephen King and Peter Straub, Black House; Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen; Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby; Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen
2002	Matt Cardin, Divinations of the Deep; Neil Gaiman, Coraline; Thomas Ligotti, My Work Is Not Yet Done; China Miéville, The Scar; David Morrell, Long Lost
2003	Brian Keene, The Rising; Reggie Oliver, The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini; Mark Samuels, The White Hands and Other Weird Tales; Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground; awarding of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Stephen King; debut of Robert Kirkman’s comic series The Walking Dead
2004	China Miéville, Iron Council; Adam Nevill, The Banquet of the Damned
2005	Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian; Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling; John Ajvide Lindqvist, Handling the Undead; Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts; H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, edited by Peter Straub and published by Library of America; Stephenie Meyer, Twilight; Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
2006	Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War; Thomas Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco; launch of The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies
2007	Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories; Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box; Sarah Langan, The Missing; John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In; Cormac McCarthy, The Road; Reggie Oliver, Masques of Satan; Dan Simmons, The Terror; establishment of the Shirley Jackson Awards
2008	John Langan, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters; Mark Samuels, Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes; Poe’s Children, edited by Peter Straub; launch of Creepypasta.com
2009	Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Red Tree; John Langan, House of Windows; Joe McKinney, Dead City
2010	Laird Barron, Occultation and Other Stories; Matt Cardin, Dark Awakenings; Justin Cronin, The Passage; Joe Hill, Horns; Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race; Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies; Adam Nevill, Apartment 16; Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching; debut of The Walking Dead television series on AMC; launch of the academic journal Horror Studies
2011	Laird Barron, The Light Is the Darkness; Livia Llewellyn, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors; Adam Nevill, The Ritual; Mark Samuels, The Man Who Collected Machen; The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
2012	Laird Barron, The Croning; Richard Gavin, At Fear’s Altar; Jack Ketchum, I’m Not Sam; Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir; Adam Nevill, Last Days
2013	Laird Barron, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All; Joe Hill, NOS4A2; John Langan, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
2014	Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners; Adam Nevill, No One Gets Out Alive; Simon Strantzas, Burnt Black Suns; Jeff VanderMeer, the Southern Reach Trilogy
2015	Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels; Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall; Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (Penguin Classics edition with revised texts); Paul Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts; National Medal of the Arts awarded to Stephen King
2015–2016	Alan Moore, Providence
2016	Laird Barron, Swift to Chase; Joe Hill, The Fireman; John Langan, The Fisherman; Livia Llewellyn, Furnace; Jon Padgett, The Secret of Ventriloquism