Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird

'Its long antennae waved inquiringly back and forth, its tiny eyes sparkled black with crimson points, and then it began to run. The Professor caught it in his hand as it toppled from the edge of the counter. It bit him.' A brush with a killer hornet upends a reverend's life. A moth wreaks a strange vengeance on an entomologist. Bees deliver a supernatural dilemma to a mother-to-be. This new anthology offers a broad range of stories from the long history of insect literature, where six-legged beasts play many roles from lethal enemies to ethereal messengers. With expert notes on how each tale contributed to insect horror literature, Janette Leaf and Daisy Butcher are your field guides for a tour through classic insect encounters from the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson, Clare Winger Harris and many more.

About the Author

Janette Leaf is a PhD candidate at Birkbeck, and has presented on Richard Marsh’s late Victorian bestseller, The Beetle, and nineteenth-century Egyptology in London and the provinces. She is also a reviewer for Cambridge University Press and the British Society for Literature and Science.Daisy Butcher is a Doctoral Student working on the Open Graves, Open Minds Project at the University of Hertfordshire. Her study focuses on depictions of the feminine in gothic and weird fiction, including particular discussion of female mummies, vampires, and of course, the killer plant.

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