Leslie Noel Daniels III, better known as Les Daniels (October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011
Background
Daniels attended
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on
Frankenstein, and he worked as a musician and as a journalist.
[Daniels, Les. The Black Castle (1978, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY), jacket bio.]
Career
He was the author of five novels featuring the
vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva,
a cynical,
amorality and
misanthropy Spanish nobleman whose predatory appetites pale into insignificance compared with the historical catastrophes which he witnesses in his periodic
. These include: the Spanish Inquisition in
The Black Castle (1978); the Spanish conquest of the
Aztecs in
The Silver Skull (1979); and the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in
Citizen Vampire (1981). In the later novels
Yellow Fog (1986, revised 1988) and
No Blood Spilled (1991), Sebastian is resurrected in
Victorian age London and
British India, where the horror of his vampirism is again contrasted with non-supernatural evil, now in the person of Sebastian's human enemy, Reginald Callender.
A sixth (and presumably final) Don Sebastian novel set in
Tibet and entitled
White Demon was planned and is advertised by some sources as being available for purchase, but in fact was never completed: Daniels had begun writing it before abandoning it due to the demands of his non-fiction projects and was told when able to resume that his publisher had lost interest.
Daniels also worked with the historical fiction genre. The Black Castle features appearances by Torquemada and Columbus; in The Silver Skull Sebastian confronts Hernán Cortés; in Citizen Vampire he has a couple of friendly encounters with the Marquis de Sade; and Marie Tussaud makes an appearance in Yellow Fog.
Daniels described his works as "tragedy, in which evil consumes itself", as opposed to the melodrama of most contemporary horror novels, in which "customarily good guys meet bad guys and win in two out of three falls".[Daniels, Yellow Fog (1986), author's introduction] He cited Robert Bloch as an influence on his sardonic style, and was an enthusiast of the works of John Dickson Carr, who in several of his own works combined historical fiction with horror and the detective story.[S. T. Joshi, "Les Daniels: The Horror of History" in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press 2004), p.166.]
Daniels was also the author of Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (Dutton, 1971) — with illustrations by the Mad Peck — and Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975).
Works
Fiction
Don Sebastian de Villanueva
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The Black Castle (1978)
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The Silver Skull (1979)
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Citizen Vampire (1981)
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Yellow Fog (1986; revised and expanded edition 1988)
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No Blood Spilled (1991)
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White Demon (begun circa 1991 but never completed)
An unabridged audio-book recording of The Black Castle was released by Crossroad Press in 2018.
Non-fiction
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Comix: A History of Comic Books in America 198 pages, 1971, Random House,
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Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media, 248 pages, 1975, Charles Scribner's Sons,
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Marvel Comics: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics, 287 pages, 1991, Abrams Books,
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, 256 pages, 1995, Bulfinch,
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Superman, the Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel, 192 pages, 1998, Chronicle Books,
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Superman: Masterpiece Edition, 96 pages, 1999, Chronicle Books,
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Batman The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Dark Knight, 208 pages, 1999, Chronicle Books,
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The Batman Masterpiece Edition: The Caped Crusader's Golden Age, 96 pages, 2000, Chronicle Books,
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Wonder Woman: The Complete History, 96 pages, 2000, Chronicle Books,
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Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, 80 pages, 2001, Chronicle Books,
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The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days, 744 pages, 2004, Harry N. Abrams,
As editor
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Thirteen Tales of Terror (1971; with Diane Thompson)
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Fear (1975)
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Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre (1976)
Awards
See also
-
List of horror fiction authors
External links
