William Hope Hodgson was an author of weird fiction in the early decades of the Twentieth-Century. His major works are the House on the Borderland, the Night Land, and the Carnacki the Ghost-Finder stories though he produced significantly more stories. His early life included a time spent as sailor which features in many of his tales.
One of Hodgson's major claims to fame is that he was a major inspiration for Lovecraft and is arguably the bridge between the Nineteen-Century ghost story and Twentieth-Century cosmic horror. Hodgson wrote uncanny stories. Mysterious phenomena feel mysterious in Hodgson's writing. Based on my sparse contact with Victorian gothic this was a departure for horror. Ghosts, vampires, and werewolves all come straight from folklore and while that certainly featured in his work he went further when he strayed to the end of time in the Night Land and past the edge of the universe in the House on the Borderland. After his time on the sea his works have more than a tinge of thalassophobia and those deep, dark, desolate depths may have been the major inspiration for the fathomless vistas of his fiction.
William Hope Hodgson lived from November 15th, 1877 to April 19th, 1918. He died violently along so many others in World War I leaving behind his wife of five years and many fans. He was missed.
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