Author: Sampson, Ana
Literature: history & criticism
Published on 23 September 2025 by Universe Publishing in the United States.
Hardback | 368 pages, 30 colour ILLUSTRATIONS
242 x 161 x 34 | 970g
The perfect book for fans of Edgar Allan Poe and, more widely, for those who love their dark side with a touch of horror. Poetry s fascination with the weird and the macabre has a long literary history, and Sampson sates modern appetites with this curated collection of over 300 of the best poems published on the subject.
There is a fine and terrible tradition of poetry of the occult, the macabre, and the sinister, and this anthology will introduce the reader to both celebrated antiheroes like Keats s serpentine Lamia and Christina Rossetti s thirsty goblins, and less well-known figures from nightmare, such as Violet Fane s deadly Victorian siren and Clare Pollard s ultramodern Reynardine. From the gothic dreamscapes of Edgar Allan Poe to Coleridge s unhallowed ocean, explore the mind s dark places with poems that stretch back centuries to the latest terror from today s bards. The sinister but seductive beauty of illustrators such as Harry Clarke accompany the poems in a volume that will speak to those drawn to the dark.