''The House of the Wolf'' is a Gothic

horror novel Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. ...

by author

Basil Copper Basil Frederick Albert Copper (5 February 1924 – 3 April 2013) was an English writer and former journalist and newspaper editor. Mike Ashley, "Basil Copper", in David Pringle, ed., ''St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers.''(London: ...

. It was published by

Arkham House Arkham House is an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had ...

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning ...

in an edition of 3,578 copies. It was the author's fourth book published by Arkham House. The book contains a number of interior black and white illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian. In 2003 Sarob Press 2003 issued a limited edition of ''The House of the Wolf'', limited to 150 copies, with cover art by Randy Broecker and interior illustrations by Stephen Jones. In 2014

Valancourt Books Valancourt Books is an independent American publishing house founded by James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle in 2005. The company specializes in "the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction," in particular gay titles and Gothic and ho ...

reissued ''The House of the Wolf'' with Fabian's illustrations and a new Afterword by Stephen Jones.

Plot summary

The story, a Victorian thriller, involves Professor John Coleridge, who is a guest at Castle Homolky, situated above the tiny Hungarian village of Lugos. While staying at the castle, a huge black

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

is discovered with preternatural powers.

Reception

It was reviewed favorably by Chris Henderson in the December 1983 issue of Dragon Magazine (#80). Henderson praised Copper for having achieved a difficult task in writing a "new, almost fresh,

werewolf In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (; ; uk, Вовкулака, Vovkulaka), is an individual that can shapeshift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature), either purposely ...

story". The characters are "fresh and stimulating" and have "an air of realism". In closing, he noted that: "For that fan of horror stories in your household, this novel is a must.".

References

* * * * 1983 American novels American horror novels American gothic novels Novels set in Hungary {{1980s-gothic-novel-stub