H. P. Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” was first published in the amateur magazine The Recluse. Its initial appearance came in August 1927, in the magazine’s only issue.
The essay is a broad history of supernatural and weird fiction. Lovecraft traces the genre from folklore and medieval material through Gothic fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, nineteenth-century horror, and the leading writers of his own era. He discusses authors such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James.
Lovecraft wrote and researched the essay between 1925 and 1927. He later revised and expanded it during the 1930s, and portions appeared serially in The Fantasy Fan. The complete revised text became widely available in the collection The Outsider and Others, published in 1939.
The title is sometimes associated with Weird Tales because Lovecraft was closely connected with that magazine and its readership. Weird Tales did not publish the essay first, however; The Recluse holds that distinction.