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Frankenstein by
Mary Shelley, while not a
zombie
story proper, prefigures many 20th century ideas about
zombies in that the resurrection of the dead is
portrayed as a scientific process rather than a mystical
one, and that the resurrected dead are degraded and more
violent than their living selves. Frankenstein,
published in 1818, has its roots in European folklore,
whose tales of vengeful dead also informed the evolution
of the modern conception of vampires as well as
zombies.
Later notable 19th century stories about the avenging
undead included Ambrose Bierce's "The Death of Halpin
Frayser", and various Gothic Romanticism tales by
Edgar
Allan Poe.
Though their works couldn't be properly
considered zombie stories, the supernatural tales of
Bierce and Poe would prove influential on later
undead-themed
writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, by Lovecraft's own
admission.
One early book to expose more recent western culture
to the concept of the zombie was The Magic Island by W.B.
Seabrook in 1929.
Island is the sensationalized account
of a narrator in Haiti who encounters voodoo cults and
their resurrected thralls. The book "introduced 'zombi'
into U.S. speech".
Zombies - 1920s and early 1930s
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