Welcome back to Back Shelf Reviews, where I review backlist titles I didn’t get a chance to read when they were first published. I do this every week to ensure I’m reading more than just newly released and forthcoming titles.

This week’s title is Monster, She Wrote by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson, which won the 2019 Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction and the 2020 Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction. I’ve had this book on my TBR for far too long, and I’m so glad I finally read it. This book gave me a ton of information on women authors who wrote fierce speculative and weird fiction and have largely been lost to history. I’ve added so many titles to my 2024 TBR plans because of this book, which is incredibly exciting.

Goodreads / Amazon

Blurb:

Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.

Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You’ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today’s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.

Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.

Review:

Throughout this book Kröger and Anderson detail women authors of weird fiction, horror, and science fiction from 1666 through present day. For each of the authors, Monster, She Wrote provides a biography, brief bibliography, reading list, and selection of related works. You’ll want to have your sticky notes and highlighter on hand, because the book is chock-full of details. It’s a massive trove of information, and you’ll almost certainly find books and authors you’ll want to read.

Many of the authors detailed in Monster, She Wrote have been overlooked, forgotten, and sometimes even misgendered throughout history. While history has remembered male authors and their contributions to science fiction and horror, many of the early women authors working in the speculative and weird fiction space were not so fortunate.

One of the noted authors who really made an impression on me in Monster, She Wrote was Pauline E. Hopkins. Pauline E. Hopkins was born in 1859 and has been called “the single most productive black woman writer at the turn of the century.” She was a prolific writer and a literary editor for The Colored American magazine. Hopkins’ book, Of One Blood, is remarkably reminiscent of a Black Panther-like premise. “A mixed-race Harvard medical student stumbles upon a hidden Ethiopian city, the inhabitants of which possess both advanced technologies and mystical powers.” Incredible, right? And it was written in 1902.¹

Monster, She Wrote is filled with stories like Pauline’s, and I loved reading about these women who helped shape all my favorite genres, even if their contributions aren’t always remembered by society at large.

2024 Back Shelf Review Plans:

Because this book was so impactful, I’ll be reading works by some of these women as part of my Back Shelf Reviews in 2024. My Back Shelf Reviews focus on backlist titles, so this is a perfect combination. Not all of my 2024 weekly Back Shelf Reviews will be of Monster, She Wrote authors, but many of them will. I’ve collected a lengthy Goodreads list of titles and authors I found interesting in Monster, She Wrote. Feel free to check out the list for yourself. Let me know if you read any of the books!

Final Thoughts:

If you love reading about feminist women, speculative and weird fiction, and history forgotten by the masses, read Monster, She Wrote. You won’t regret it.

Rating: 5/5 Stars. Infinity Stars. It’s going on my Goodreads Infinity Stars Shelf. This was a transformational read for me. I plan to pick up Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult by these authors soon.

1. This information all came from Monster, She Wrote. They did all the research! Pages 63-66 in my copy. ↩︎