Something like Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?
Would Hound of the Baskervilles count? I know when I first encountered the story (in film form) I assumed it was going to be a werewolf story and not have rational non-supernatural conclusion. Was it written with that intent?
I think it’s meant to be some sort of demonic dog, not a man that turns into a wolf or dog.
Probably The Werewolf of Paris, from 1933.
For what it’s worth, the break-out werewolf movie, The Wolf Man from 1941 that starred Lon Chaney Jr. in the title role, was an original screenplay by Curt Siodmak, with no attribution to anything that it was adapted from. There was one earlier movie, Werewolf of London, for which writer Robert Harris was credited with the “original story.” He and another writer are in IMDb for “adaptation” but it doesn’t say what was adapted.
Neither the Wolf Man nor Werewolf of London were based on The Werewolf of Paris, even though the novel was right there, and its author, Guy Endore, actually worked as a screenwriter and wrote several horror films during that period. His novel didn’t really get adapted to film until Hammer’s Curse of the Werewolf in 1961.
The Werewolf of Paris is fairly political, being set mostly during the Paris Commune. (Endore was a member of the Communist party and was eventually blacklisted by several studios). Curse of the Werewolf dropped most of the political content and moved the setting to Spain.
Not as many people seem to read The Werewolf of Paris as Dracula or Frankenstein these days, and I’m not sure how influential it’s really been. But it does seem to be the only major werewolf novel of the period before horror films really took off.
As Roderick notes, Curt Siodmak wrote the original Wolfman movie, and invented much of the “fakelore” surrounding it. The Jeckyll-and-Hyde monster that was Lon Chaney’s Wolfman is very unlike werewolf legends. So there really was no definitive werewolf novel.
One highly regarded novel s Jack Williamson’s Darker than you Think (1948), but it isn’t regarded as the setter of tropes.
Have a look at my webpage Secrets of the Wolf Man
The characters think it’s some kind of demonic dog and say so. I assumed watching it would actually be one of the characters as a werewolf. Of course I thought that as the werewolf trope was thoroughly established in culture at that point.
Hound of the Baskervilles is sort of an Ur-Scooby Doo story: “He used the old legend to frighten Sir Charles to death. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for that meddling consulting detective!”
I don’t think any of the original Sherlock Holmes stories involved any supernatural elements.
They didn’t. Even The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire rejected the very idea of blood-drinking corpses.
The closest to supernatural the stories got where when Doyle went off on a woo-woo tangent, as in The Adventure of the Creeping Man. People were screwing around with simian extracts and transplants, but they wouldn’t have that effect.
Doyle even kept really woo stories away from his other hero, Professor Challenger. When he wrote the abysmal and supernatural The Maracot Deep he used as his hero a Challenger-like substitute, Professor Maracot.
I would go with either Darker Than You Think(1940) by Jack Williamson, or The Werewolf Of Paris(1933) by Guy Endore. For old classic short stories definitely get The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Werewolf Anthology.
Considering that Cat People, which looks like the werewolf story with a panther instead of a wolf to me, premiered 1942 this idea must have been in the air around then:
The germ of Cat People was Lewton’s short story, “The Bagheeta,” published in Weird Tales magazine (July 1930), about a legendary panther, a “half leopard and half woman . . . were-beast,”
[…]
According to Bodeen, Koerner felt that werewolves, vampires and man-made monsters were over-exploited, and that “nobody has done much with cats”.
Seems to imply that there were already more werewolf stories out there before the ones mentioned here.
Take a look at the third book on my list.
Thanks for this list, seems like a good starting spot.
Notice there is no Ann Rice or Laurel K. Robinson crap on that list, and certainly no Mercy Thompson type stories.
Those of you who have read a lot of werewolf stories, which do you think are the best? I like Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf, but I don’t think it should be the trope-setter. The Howling was based on a novel by Gary Brandner, but I don’t think many people have read it.
FWIW, Stephen King declares The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to be the archetypal werewolf book.