With Halloween approaching, The Conversation asked six academic experts to talk about the scariest book they’ve ever read. From haunted houses to murderous beasts and villainous vampires, these are the spooky reads that have stayed with them long after they turned the final page...
A Dictionary of Monsters and Mysterious Beasts, by Carey Miller (1974)
it’s “The eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil.” She’s right. I bought at a school book fair when I was seven. I was intrigued by the glowering goblin on the cover (who looked like my science teacher) and the jacket’s promise of creatures “fair and foul, fascinating and frightening” (another Macbeth allusion, not that I knew it).
I relished the weirdness of amphisbaenas (two-headed ant-eating reptiles), (which hatched from cockerels’ eggs and had petrifying breath) and (which somehow combined a man’s face, a lion’s body and a scorpion’s tail). But nothing prepared me for page 172. Mary French’s drawing of a werewolf gave me nightmares.
But I kept looking at it until I moved gradually to stronger fare: anthologies of classic gothic tales edited by and, as adolescence arrived, the thrillingly visceral horrors of and . Miller’s book was undeniably a landmark in the development of my literary interests. I never go anywhere without silver bullets.
Review by Dr Nick Freeman, a Reader in late-Victorian literature at 91²Ö¿â.
