In the book's original Forenote, readers were also asked to send in any errors to be corrected, and those were incorporated as well. Among other things, King discusses the fact that he asked Dennis Etchison 'to comb the errors' in the original edition, and thus the 1983 paperback edition contains the corrected text of Danse Macabre. A new introduction was added to this edition, entitled 'Forenote to the Paperback Edition'. Later, Berkley Books published a mass market paperback edition of the book on Decem( ISBN 978-0425064627). The limited edition did not have a dust jacket, and instead was housed in a slipcase. Along with the trade hardcover, Everest House also published a limited edition of the book, signed by King, limited to 250 numbered copies and 15 lettered copies. Thompson ultimately convinced King that if he wrote such a genre survey, he would no longer have to answer tedious, repetitive interview questions on the topic.ĭanse Macabre was originally published in hardcover by Everest House on Ap( ISBN 978-0896960763). The concept intrigued and frightened me at the same time. Bill called me and said, 'Why don't you do a book about the entire horror phenomenon as you see it? Books, movies, radio, TV, the whole thing. In the introduction, King credits Bill Thompson, the editor of his first five published novels, and later editor at Doubleday, as being the inspiration for its creation. To avoid confusion, the actual 'Danse Macabre' essay was given the title 'Anatomie de l'horreur' ('An Anatomy of Horror') when it was released in France 14 years later, in 1995. Similarly, his 1978 collection of short stories Night Shift was released in France as Danse macabre in 1980.

The same happened in Brazil and Portugal with both countries translating The Stand as 'A Dança da Morte', meaning also 'The Dance of Death'. King's novel The Stand was published in Spanish as La danza de la muerte 'The Dance of Death', which caused some confusion between the two books (A later Spanish edition of this novel was titled Apocalipsis 'Apocalypse'). King peppers his book with informal academic insight, discussing archetypes, important authors, common narrative devices, 'the psychology of terror', and his key theory of ' Dionysian horror'. Danse Macabre explores the history of the genre as far back as the Victorian era, but primarily focuses on the 1950s to the 1970s (roughly the era covering King's own life at the time of publication). It was republished on February 23, 2010, with an additional new essay entitled ' What's Scary'.ĭanse Macabre examines the various influences on King's own writing, and important genre texts of the 19th and 20th centuries. Danse Macabre is a 1981 non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, TV, radio, film and comics, and the influence of contemporary societal fears and anxieties on the genre.

Danse Macabre by Stephen King