I put together Horror: A Literary History in 2016 after the British Library contacted me with the exciting idea of a lavishly illustrated volume on the topic. It was originally a side project that I developed purely for my love of the genre, as a love letter to it, in fact. All histories are always partial, so my aim was not to provide a definitive tome (this would require many volumes), but an introduction that could be enjoyed by both aficionados and beginners. I wanted to bring academics together from different disciplines who would be able to offer their own unique research-influenced insights.
I was very keen to work with writers like Roger Luckhurst, who knows the turn of the century very well, or Dale Townshend, who is a specialist in Romanticism. I wanted to see how they could bring their own expertise to specific periods of horror writing. The book seems to have sold quite well, helped raise the profile of horror and inspired people to read more of it, which is one of the things I aim to achieve with my research.
The book, according to the author