American Supernatural Tales

Edited by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi, this anthology traces the history of American supernatural fiction in chronological order, from Washington Irving's "The Adventure of the German Student" (1824) through contemporary work by Stephen King. Along the way it collects stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, and other major American writers of the uncanny.

Rather than focusing on any single style of horror, the anthology follows how American writers reworked ghosts, hauntings, and unexplained dread across two centuries — from Puritan-inflected gothic tales through pulp weird fiction to modern psychological horror.

Part of the Penguin Horror series curated by Guillermo del Toro, this volume functions as both an introduction to the American supernatural tradition and a reference collection of its most significant short stories.