In this series we turn the pages of classic short stories to put together the literary building blocks of how a particular genre or theme began, how it built its foundations to become the well-loved and well-worn genre that it is today.Do authors have the same ideas at more or less the same time? Or can they sniff out an opportunity as to which way the tastes of an audience are moving. Success undoubtedly builds success and in literary terms we can more politely say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the surest way to reach a hungry readership is to build on the fortune and flair of your literary colleagues. The mere placing of these two words together creates a picture and a feeling that dark times are coming. Something evil, perhaps unfathomable, will be launched upon us by an author’s imagination that is sure to bring consequences that may only unsettle but equally may go much, much further than anyone, at first, imagined. 01 - Foundations of Fiction - Gothic Horror - An Introduction2 - The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe3 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens4 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving5 - Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson6 - The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin7 - The Dream by Mary Shelley8 - Green Tea by Sheridan Le Fanu9 - The Lifted Veil by George Eliot10 - Count Magnus by M R James11 - The Sand-Man by E T A Hoffman12 - The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton13 - Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon14 - The Yellow Sign by Robert W Chambers15 - The Three Sisters by W W Jacobs16 - Vampirismus or Aurelia by E T A Hoffman17 - The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe18 - A Diagnosis of Death by Ambrose Bierce19 - Wake Not the Dead by Ernst Raupach