Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Anthology, May 23, 2001
It's a shame that this collection has gone out of print. It contains a careful selection of horror stories, including exerpts from 18th century chap books and lesser known works from the Victorian penny magazines. Most of the writers represented are from th 19th and early 20th century: Poe, Ambrose Bierce, de Maupassant, and H. G. Wells.(Even though the editor expressed his dislike of H. P. Lovecraft, I think one of his works should have been included.) But overall it's a great book. And well worth the money.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finally found it!, December 20, 2003
When I was in my early teens, I read a short story that I've been looking for ever since. . .It was in a raggedy paperback collection, likely presented by Alfred Hitchcock (or maybe just including a story which became one of his films, as I seem to recall 'The Birds'), and has apparently been long out of print. The story itself concerned some hideous murder and the clever, though macabre, disposal of the remains . . . something about a bottle of relish. As a young man, it stuck out in my mind with an extreme EWWWWWWWW factor, though I could never remember its title or author. For years I've combed through bookstores, new and used, seeking words in titles and tales that might trigger recognition - to no avail. I'd given up on finding it, honestly, though still I searched. Today, nearly two decades later, I've found the story!! It's included in this great collection: a little ditty, aptly titled "The Two Bottles of Relish" by some chap named Lord Dunsany. My heart soared. My eyes grew huge. Drool fell down my chin, smearing fingers coated with the ancient dust of sedentary books. I thought, "Gosh, I hope it's as good as I remember . . ." But I have it - and, apparently, loads of other good stuff from horror past, in this thick collection. Over six hundred pages, crammed full of shivers and frights . . . a horror mavens fantasy. 'Tis mostly older works - from Poe, HG Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the like - but there's lots of folks here I don't know, oodles of spooky stories yet to keep one awake at night. Going now to turn down the lights, burn some candles, and rediscover a tiny, lost piece of my youth. If I am lucky, I might even have to throw the lights back on . . .
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Classics, the Lesser Known, and the Tame, April 19, 2009
This book was published in 1984 and contained 43 works by as many writers. There were 42 short stories and 1 excerpt from a novel.
The pieces ranged from the 1790s to the 1980s, with the majority from the 1880s to 1950s. Nearly three-quarters of the stories in the book were from the 20th century.
As far as could be determined, there were 26 writers from Great Britain, 10 from the U.S., 4 from France, and 1 each from Ireland, Germany and India. Six of the authors were women (D. K. Broster, Monica Dickens, Dorothy Haynes, Muriel Spark, Patricia Highsmith, and Dawn Muscillo).
The editor sought a balance of famous and lesser-known writers from Great Britain and elsewhere, with a few humorous examples, while for the most part avoiding ghost tales, because these went into Penguin's companion anthology on ghost stories. He also sought to avoid horror stories from recent times that he called crude or obvious. One story from Weird Tales magazine of the U.S. and a piece by Bradbury were included; otherwise, none of the best-known American horror writers were represented, nor were there any from the world of SF.
From the 1790s to the mid-1800s, there were two anonymous authors of Gothic tales, James Hogg, Merimée, Balzac, Poe and a readable early story by Henry James.
From the late 19th century up through World War II, there were Zola, Stevenson, Bierce, Maupassant, Wells, M. R. James, Kafka, Benson, Faulkner, Lord Dunsany, Waugh and Kersh. Lesser-known writers from this period included Perceval Landon, William Hope Hodgson, John Russell, A. M. Burrage and Carl Stephenson.
Those after World War II included Roald Dahl, L. P. Hartley, Robert Graves, John Lennon(!), Muriel Spark, Yvor Winters, Bradbury, Highsmith, Monica Dickens and J. N. Allan.
The editor's scholarly introduction took up nearly 10% of the book. He defined the horror story as that which shocked or frightened the reader, exploring "the limits of what people are capable of doing and the limits of what they are capable of experiencing . . . the realms of psychological chaos, emotional wastelands, psychic trauma, abysses opened up by the imagination, the capacity for experiencing fear, hysteria and madness, all that lies on the dark side of the mind and near side of barbarism, on and beyond the shifting frontiers of consciousness."
He surveyed in great detail scenes of horror from classical Greek and Roman drama and the Middle Ages, depictions of hell and the devil in the Middle and Renaissance Europe, the growth of the idea of a subjective, psychological hell, Gothic fiction in England and Germany, the Faust legend, dual identities, vampirism, werewolves and ghosts, though not demons, possession or madness. He claimed that the vast majority of horror stories in European/American literature came from English, and that most of them were by British writers.
The classic pieces in the collection included "The Case of M. Valdemar," "The Boarded Window," "In the Penal Colony," "The Waxwork" and "The Two Bottles of Relish."
Among the most impressive stories for me were an exploration of cruelty, resentment and pathos ("The Terrapin" by Highsmith), old age, senility and death ("Activity Time" by Dickens), a demented bet and psychological tension ("Man from the South" by Dahl), and the early story by Henry James, set in the realm of Hawthorne but focused on the lives of women and introducing an Englishman into America ("The Romance of Certain Old Clothes"). A cartoonish piece by Kersh, "Comrade Death," was interesting for taking the story of an arms merchant to its logical conclusion. "Leiningen Versus the Ants," by Carl Stephenson, depicted horror in the face of a natural catastrophe. "The Aquarist," by J. N. Allan, followed a descent into madness.
Too many of the other stories showed merely a supernatural or other event that just wasn't horrific, and didn't explore deeply a psychological dimension. Some of the stories -- in which a man began unaccountably to take on the appearance of an Egyptian god, or a Scotsman was duped by foreigners into providing facial expressions for a film -- seemed pretty crude themselves, and the vignette by Lennon didn't seem to fit, either. Sometimes -- as in the story by Winters -- it wasn't quite clear what the horror was.
The editor was a scholar -- of medieval and Renaissance literature -- and obviously had read many horror tales, which led to the inclusion of some good, lesser-known stories. On the other hand, too many selections seemed a bit old-fashioned and a few more recent writers might've provided greater variety.
Authors absent from the anthology: Robert Aickman, who's been called the greatest British writer of horror stories in the second half of the 20th century, William Sansom, H. P. Lovecraft, Sturgeon, Bloch and Matheson. Contemporary writers mentioned by the editor but omitted from the book included J. G. Ballard, John Hawkes, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, James Purdy, William Burroughs, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King and Angela Carter.
Other large anthologies of horror fiction include The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), A Second Century of Creepy Stories (1937), Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944), Dark Forces (1980), The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981), The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories (1984), Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (1985), The Dark Descent (1987), The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (1989), The Mammoth Book of Terror (1991), The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1991), Final Shadows (1991), Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown (1993), The Oxford Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1996), The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003), The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2005), The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007), American Supernatural Tales (2007) and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (2008).
Smaller volumes include The Ghost Book (1926), Great Ghost Stories (1930), Great Tales of Horror (1933), Best Ghost Stories (1945), The Second Ghost Book (1952), The Third Ghost Book (1955), The Supernatural in the English Short Story (1959), The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Vols. 1-30 (1959-88), The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Vols. 1-20 (1964-84), The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, Vols. 1-17 (1966-84), The Thrill of Horror: 22 Terrifying Tales (1975), Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1984), Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (1997) and Haunted Houses: The Greatest Stories (1997).
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by Chris Baldick
by Alexandre Dumas père
by Alan Ryan
