Penguin Encyclopedia Of Horror & The Supernatural

Jack Sullivan (ed) - The Penguin Encyclopedia Of Horror & The Supernatural (Penguin/ Viking, 1986)



Perhaps the ultimate (even I'm using it now) recommended .... but purchase. If you've not got a copy and find one going reasonably priced then you could do a lot worse than pick it up. You'll surely appreciate the abundance of illustrative material, there are some excellent stand-alone essays - Ron Goulart on the pulp magazines (condensed from Cheap Thrills), Ramsey Campbell on his favourite bad horror movies are two that come to mind - and many of the entries are as informative as you'd expect with top players like E. F. Bleiler, Hugh Lamb, Robert Hadji, Devendra Varma and Richard Dalby among the small army of contributors. Unfortunately, that 'but' I mentioned is a very big 'but'. For all the effort that went into compiling this, seems nobody thought to hire a proof reader so the bibliographical information is sloppily reproduced with the result that it's often just plain inaccurate. I reckon many of the non-existent books listed on sites like fantasy fiction originate from The Penguin Encyclopedia Of Horror & The Supernatural. The Charles Birkin one certainly does.

It is not just me who says so, either. Rosemary Pardoe, writing in that most respectable of literary institutions, Ghosts & Scholars (#9, 1987), hardly noted for it's vitriolic reviews, came over all scathing about The Encyclopedia ... in a footnote to Hugh Lamb's even-handed but *ahem: i need a new vocabulary* ultimately despondent assessment.

I have to say that i think Hugh has been remarkably kind to a book which, for me, is a fine idea totally ruined by being put together by a packaging company who seem to know nothing about the subject. There are so many errors that no fact given in the book can be trusted without double-checking elsewhere.

Ghosts & Scholars

It's still a lovely book to own a copy of, but you can't help thinking that, had the contributors efforts been transcribed with the attention to detail they deserve and maybe some attempt at an index been provided, this would have been as 'must have' as they come. as it stands, it's more a case of 'must have at least another 30 reference books to consult before i can confirm anything in here as accurate.'