Peter Penzoldt

Peter Penzoldt (born Munich, 18 January 1925; died Geneva, August 1969) was the author of "The Supernatural in Fiction" (1952), a major critical study of the weird tale.

"The Supernatural in Fiction" is an expansion of Penzoldt's doctoral thesis, which was submitted to the University of Geneva when he was twenty-four. Published on the recommendation of Algernon Blackwood, whom Penzoldt met in 1949, it contains chapters on the structure of supernatural tales, on various motifs such as the ghost, the vampire, the werewolf, the witch, on the relationship of the supernatural tale to science fiction, and on the "psychological ghost story".

There are also individual chapters on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Rudyard Kipling, M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, and Algernon Blackwood, to whom the book is dedicated.

References

Douglas A. Anderson, "Notes on Lost and Forgotten Writers", "All Hallows 43" (Summer 2007).