This cool book, originally published in 1988, asked famous writers to create the ultimate list of the Top 100 Horror Novels over history. I was so impressed by the obscure and classic titles they discussed, I copied the full list with Amazon links for reference. Check it out!
1592: Christopher Marlow – The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
1606: William Shakespeare – The Tragedy of Macbeth
1612: John Webster – The White Devil
1794: William Godwin – Caleb Williams
1796: Matthew Gregory Lewis – The Monk
1816: E.T.A. Hoffman – The Best Tales of Hoffman
1817: Jane Austen – Northanger Abbey
1818: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – Frankenstein
1820: Charles Maturin – Melmoth the Wanderer
1824: James Hogg – The Confessions of a Justified Sinner
1838: Edgar Allan Poe – Tales of Mystery and Imagination
1838: Nathaniel Hawthorne – Twice-Told Tales
1842: Jeremias Gotthelf – The Black Spider
1845: Eugene Sue – The Wandering Jew
1857: Herman Melville – The Confidence Man
1864: J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Uncle Silas
1886: Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1887: H. Rider Haggard – She
1895: Robert W. Chambers – The King in Yellow
1896: H.G. Wells – The Island of Dr. Moreau
1897: Bram Stoker – Dracula
1898: Henry James – The Turn of the Screw
1902: Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
1903: Bram Stoker – The Jewel of Seven Stars
1904: M.R. James – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
1906: Arthur Machen – The House of Souls
1908: Algernon Blackwood – John Silence
1908: G.K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday
1908: William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland
1909: Ambrose Bierce – The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce
1911: Oliver Onions – Widdershins
1912: E.F. Benson – The Horror Horn
1920: David Lindsay – A Voyage to Arcturus
1925: Franz Kafka – The Trial
1929: James Branch Cabell – Something About Eve
1929: E.H. Visiak – Medusa
1933: Guy Endore – The Werewolf of Paris
1933: Marjorie Bowen – The Last Bouquet
1934: Alexander Laing – The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck
1937: Hugh Walpole – A Second Century of Creepy Stories
1938: C.S. Lewis – The Dark Tower
1939: Dalton Trumbo – Johnny Got His Gun
1939: H.P. Lovecraft – The Outsider and Others
1942: Clark Ashton Smith – Out of Space and Time
1943: Fritz Leiber – Conjure Wife
1945: Cornell Woolrich – Night Has a Thousand Eyes
1945: H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth – The Lurker at the Threshold
1946: Paul Bailey – Deliver Me from Eva
1946: Boris Karloff – And the Darkness Falls
1947: August Derleth – The Sleeping and the Dead
1949: Walter Van Tilburg Clark – Track of the Cat
1952: Sarban – The Sound of His Horn
1954: William Golding – Lord of the Flies
1954: Richard Matheson – I Am Legend
1955: Ray Bradbury – The October Country
1958: Payne Brennan – Nine Horrors and A Dream
1959: Robert Bloch – Psycho
1959: Nigel Kneale – Quatermass and the Pit
1959: H.P. Lovecraft – Cry Horror!
1959: Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
1964: Philip K. Dick – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
1965: Jerzy Kosinski – The Painted Bird
1966: J.G. Ballard – The Crystal World
1968: Robert Aickman – Sub Rosa
1969: Kingsley Amis – The Green Man
1969: Anthony Boucher – The Compleat Werewolf
1971: John Gardner – Grendel
1971: William Peter Blatty – The Exorcist
1972: John Brunner – The Sheep Look Up
1973: Manly Wade Wellman – Worse Things Waiting
1973: Robert Marasco – Burnt Offerings
1975: Stephen King – ’Salems Lot
1975: Harlan Ellison – Deathbird Stories
1977: Hugh B. Cave – Murgunstrumm and Others
1977: Bernard Taylor – Sweetheart, Sweetheart
1977: John Farris – All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By
1977: Stephen King – The Shining
1978: William Hjortsberg – Falling Angel
1978: Whitley Strieber – The Wolfen
1979: David Morrell – The Totem
1979: Peter Straub – Ghost Story
1980: Jonathan Carroll – The Land of Laughs
1980: Richard Laymon – The Cellar
1981: Thomas Harris – Red Dragon
1981: F. Paul Wilson – The Keep
1982: Dennis Etchison – The Dark Country
1983: Karl Edward Wagner – In a Lonely Place
1983: Tim Powers – The Anubis Gates
1983: Robert Irwin – The Arabian Nightmare
1984: Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory
1984: T.E.D. Klein – The Ceremonies
1984: Robert Holdstock – Mythago Wood
1984: Michael Bishop – Who Made Stevie Crye?
1985: Dan Simmons – Song of Kali
1985: Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
1985: Peter Ackroyd – Hawksmoor
1986: Lisa Tuttle – A Nest of Nightmares
1986: Charles L. Grant – The Pet
1987: Robert McCammon – Swan Song
1987: Ramsey Campbell – Dark Feasts