Horror Various Authors: Cry Wolf! (collected werewolves). v1. 31 Oct 2025

[GrannyGrump]

Volume I -- ROOTS
Early werewolf tales. These four novels, spanning the Victorian, Edwardian, and WWI eras, helped lay the groundwork that established the werewolfian canon as we know it today.

Spoiler:

Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1846)
by George W. M. Reynolds.
One of the very earliest treatments of the Werewolf theme in English literature.
Penny-dreadful gothic novel about Fernand Wagner, an old man who makes a Faustian bargain for eternal youth, but is instead cursed with lycanthropy, transforming into a werewolf monthly. Wagner tries to break the curse amidst a sprawling plot involving family secrets, supernatural events, romances, and critiques of religious hypocrisy in 16th-century Italy.

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The Wolf-Leader (1857)
by Alexandre Dumas.
One of the first werewolf novels; a dark fable of greed, devilry and hubris. This is a werewolf story, but it is a Faustian tale at heart.
The lengthy introductory story has vital background information to the main story, and should not be skipped.

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The Door of the Unreal (1919)
by Gerald Biss.
After a series of mysterious disappearances on the London to Brighton road leaves the police baffled, a trio of intrepid investigators determine to unravel the mystery. But even they do not suspect the terrible truth until it is almost too late...
H. P. Lovecraft called this book one of the children of Dracula, a novel that did for werewolves what Dracula did for vampires.

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The Undying Monster (1922)
by Jessie Douglas Kerruish.
An occult detective story, one of the earliest to have a female protagonist, which explores that horror staple, the “ancient family curse that has haunted the local gentry for eons”.
A Goodreads reviewer found it to be: “gothic (in 1920s’ England!), atmospheric, dramatic, well-researched, compelling (I couldn’t put it down), puzzling, tragic in places and, ultimately, gloriously fun.”
Author/editor Mark Valentine opined: “Perhaps the nearest British example [of a werewolf story comparable to Dracula] would be The Undying Monster…” He awarded it comparable footing to Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris (as the “American classic” in that category.)
[Due to copyright restrictions, The Werewolf of Paris (1933) by Guy Endore (1901-1970) could not be included in this collection.]

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Volume II -- NARRATIVES
Eighty short pieces, including several folk tales, a handful of essays, and a smattering of poetry — dedicated to the sinister subject of lycanthropy.

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I have posted a companion VAMPIRE collection.
If you have a soft spot (on the neck, perhaps) for vampires, please click
HERE

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Texts were retrieved from multiple online sources.
Contents were originally published ca. 1170 ~ 1941.
Volume I of “Cry Wolf” is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.
Volume II of Cry Wolf is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

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