Customer Reviews

Great Tales of Terror

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This time around, editor Joshi has turned up little-known tales by familiar authors such as Blackwood and Machen, and even less well known tales by authors who'd rarely be suspected of such work, such as Edith Nesbit and H. L. Mencken. The overall literary standards are fairly high, with only two real bummers in the lot.

We begin with "ghost" tales by Arthur Quiller-Crouch, William Sharp, Robert Hichens (an interesting tale spoiled by being precisely two times too long!), Lafcadio Hearn, and Walter de la Mare. The ghost is a very problematical concept, internally contradictory--- an immaterial spirit could not be seen nor could it affect the waking world--- and almost guaranteed to lead the author artistically astray. Most of these tales do not avoid that trap, although one does not involve a ghost at all.

Next are some "haunted places" explored by W. W. Astor, Violet Hunt and James Hopper. The last of these tales suggests that the afterlife is to be spent attending the same school one attended as a child--- whether the experience was bliss or torture.

Next come "weird creatures," depicted by Gautier, Bierce, and W. F. Harvey. The best of these is Gautier's tale of the foot of the mummy of a lovely Egyptian princess... and with the foot in hand, guess who's not far behind.

Next we encounter "the superhuman," with tales by LeFanu, Barry Pain, Edith Nesbit (an excellent mad-scientist adventure!), H. L. Mencken (with a plot that would have made a good early 1940s Bela Lugosi movie) and Thomas Burke.

The low point of the collection is found in "terror of fantasy," with the contributions by Erckmann-Chatrian and Gertrude Atherton descending to depths of pure, mindless idiocy rarely encountered even in supernatural fiction.

Things pick up again with "cosmic terror," which contains a moving poem in prose by Lord Dunsany, a cautionary tale about the dangers of "knowing too much" by Blackwood, a short tale that contemplates the total destruction of the earth with what is probably the only possible dignified attitude, from J. D. Beresford, and finally Lovecraft protege R. H. Barlow, characteristically looking forward from 1940 to a theme that came to dominate science fiction in the early 1950s.

Worth the money and worth your time.

A homicidal tortoise, a man's head changes into that of a criminal with whom he has been drinking, and a observer follows the dead into a series of caves where, like Dante, they observe their torments. These are a few of the subject covered by this book of weird tales.

As noted by reviewer Rory Coker the stories are divided into categories dealing with haunted places, weird creatures, and fantasy. The stories cover a period roughly from the mid-19th century into the early decades of the 20th. One of stories that caught my attention was "The Mummies Foot" by Theophile Gautier, which I had read years before and did not have in any anthologies I currently have.

Like many anthologies of tales of terror the stories can be a bit uneven. I found H. L. Mencken's "The Windows of Horror" more of an amusing satire on the designers of women's clothing, although there is a connection to the "House of Wax" films. "The Graven Image" of William Sharp is a well written and conceived ghost story. There also are other familiar names in the collection that do not disappoint: Lafcadio Hearn's tale warns us not to make promises we cannot keep; Ambroise Bierce is his irreverent self as he talks to a demon and Sheridan Lefanu's shady astrologer.

While not all of the stories are on the same level this is a collection worth investigating. The book itself is well-made, as one expects from Dover, with type of a good size and a sturdy binding that is made to last.