Lovecraft's meticulously researched essay covers a broad spectrum, attempting to present a comprehensive historical account of horror literature, with insights into the nature, development and history of the
weird tale. Beginning with the genre's
alchemical and
folkloric roots, it continues with tales of
diabolism from the
Renaissance, the birth of
Gothic fiction towards the end of the 18th century and its migration to the "
New World" during the 19th, and it ends with an acknowledgement of Lovecraft's most noteworthy contemporaries. As a guide to early Gothic fiction, the author relied partly on
Edith Birkhead's 1921 historical work
The Tale of Terror, and partly on the expertise of the great many experts and collectors in his circle. The bulk of the essay was written in New York City, where Lovecraft had access not only to the vast resources of the
New York Public Library and
Brooklyn Public Library, but also to his friends' private collections, that included some rare and obscure works of horror fiction. After discussing the prehistory of the genre, citing the Anglo-Saxon
epic poem Beowulf, and the
Elizabethan plays
Doctor Faustus,
Hamlet and
Macbeth, among other works, which seem to possess the same "dæmoniac" atmosphere that later came to define weird fiction, Lovecraft extensively discusses
Horace Walpole's Gothic horror classic,
The Castle of Otranto (1764), which became so popular, it essentially established the literary horror story.
Clara Reeve's
The Old English Baron (1777),
Ann Radcliffe's
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) and
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and
Charles Brockden Brown's
Wieland: or, the Transformation (1798), all followed Walpole's success, contributing each in its own way to the enrichment of the genre. In the section titled "The Apex of Gothic Romance", Lovecraft discusses
Matthew Gregory Lewis's very popular novel
The Monk (1797) and
Charles Maturin's underrated masterpiece
Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), which evokes
Molière's
Dom Juan,
Goethe's Faust, and
Byron's
Manfred. In the following section, titled "The Aftermath of the Gothic", he covers authors whose names are regularly associated with Gothic literature, including
William Beckford,
Bram Stoker,
Mary Shelley, and
Emily Brontë. From there, he devotes a section each to the continuation of that literary tradition on the European continent, in the British Isles, and in America.
Edgar Allan Poe (whom Lovecraft considers a pioneer of the horror tale and a great
aesthete) gets a whole section dedicated to himself. Special mention is made of
Washington Irving,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Henry James,
Rudyard Kipling,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Guy de Maupassant,
Ambrose Bierce, and
Arthur Conan Doyle, accompanied by Lovecraft's own opinions and insights in their work. Lovecraft concludes his essay with an in-depth discussion of his contemporaries, including
Arthur Machen,
Algernon Blackwood,
Lord Dunsany, and
M. R. James, who he considers the four "modern masters" of the genre. ==Publication history==