This Spectacular Darkness: Critical Essays

Joel Lane, renowned as a writer of compelling strange stories, novels in the noir tradition, and acute poetry, was also a thoughtful and perceptive essayist on the fantasy and horror fields. For the journal Wormwood he wrote a series of pieces discussing the leading figures in twentieth-century dark literature, including H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Fritz Leiber and Robert Aickman. They are characterised by his profound insight, high critical standards and his keen allegiance to this fiction. Joel always intended to collect these essays in a book to be entitled This Spectacular Darkness, a quotation from the poet Edwin Morgan, whose work he admired. This cannot be that book: but it brings together all the essays he was able to write in the series. Joel writes in his essay,