"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a long essay by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft surveying the topic of horror fiction. It was written between November 1925 and May 1927 and revised during 1933–1934. Lovecraft examines the beginnings of weird fiction in the gothic novel (relying greatly on Edith Birkhead's 1921 survey The Tale of Terror) and traces its development through such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe (who merits his own chapter). Lovecraft names as the four "modern masters" of horror: Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, and Arthur Machen.
