Rosemary's Baby is a 1967 horror novel by American writer Ira Levin; it was his second published book. It was the best-selling horror novel of the 1960s, selling over 4 million copies. The high popularity of the novel was a catalyst for a "horror boom", and horror fiction would achieve enormous commercial success.
Cover of 1967 first edition
Horror is a genre of fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which are in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
An Illustration of Poe's "The Raven" by Gustave Doré
Athenodorus
Horace Walpole wrote the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), initiating a new literary genre.
Stephen King