Book Review: Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction Edited by Lisa Kröger, and Melanie R. Anderson

 

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction Edited by Lisa Kröger, and Melanie R. Anderson 

Hardcover 320 pages

Published September 2019 by Quirk Books

 I tend not to write long detailed reviews of non-fiction books, as I don’t think that is what people who read my reviews are looking for. Monster She wrote is a super cool book that I got from the library and regretted it. Meaning at some point I am going to buy it and put it on my reference shelf and I will have to re-read it to highlight it.

Before I get into the content the design of the book is amazing. Lots of blacks and Green but it has cool designs that include pulling quotes that take up entire pages. I liked that as it gave weight to the quotes for sure. There is cool art throughout, so the look and design is just fun and cool.

As for the content. I knew some of the deep histories of women who have written genre fiction and thought I knew it well. I learned a lot. I have said with confidence for example that Mary Shelley wrote the first Science Fiction, but it was this book that taught me about Margaret Cavendish. She wrote a novel The Blazing World in 1666 that was clearly science fiction. Life forever changed with this tidbit of information.

I added probably 50 to 60 books to my good reads “Want to read” shelf while reading this book, but the blazing World is at the top of that list. I learned tons about the gothic era, which is good because I want to know about that era but have zero interest in actually reading much of it. I was excited to see CL Moore get representation.

This is an important book for the history of Horror and Speculative fiction. There are plenty of histories that have focused on famous men. I can’t stress enough how cool and important this book is. 200% recommended.