From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea, ed. Mike Ashley
British Library 978-0712-35236-9, 19 July 2018, 318pp, £8.99.
From atop the choppy waves to the choking darkness of the abyss, the
seas are full of mystery and rife with tales of inexplicable events and
encounters with the unknown.
In this anthology we see a
thrilling spread of narratives; sailors are pitched against a nightmare
from the depths, invisible to the naked eye; a German U-boat commander
is tormented by an impossible transmission via Morse Code; a ship
ensnares itself in the kelp of the Sargasso Sea and dooms a crew of
mutineers, seemingly out of revenge for her lost captain
The
supernatural is set alongside the grim affairs of sailors scorned in
these salt-soaked tales, recovered from obscurity for the 21st century.
Haunted Houses. Two Novels by Charlotte Riddell, ed. Andrew Smith
British Library 978-0712-35251-2, 30 August 2018, 354pp, £8.99.
From the once-popular yet unfairly neglected Victorian writer Charlotte
Riddell comes a pair of novels which cleverly upholster the familiar
furniture of the haunted house story. In An Uninhabited House, the
hauntings are seen through the perspective of the solicitors who hold
the deed of the property. Here we find a shrewd comedic skewering of
this host of scriveners and clerks, and a realist approach to the
consequences of a haunted house how does one let such a property? Slowly
the safer world of commerce and law gives way as the encounter with the
supernatural entity beRcomes more and more unavoidable In Fairy Water,
Riddell again subverts the expectations of the reader, suggesting a
complex moral character for her haunting spirit. Her writing style is
succinct and witty, rendering the story a spirited and approachable read
despite its age.
Glimpses of the Unknown. Lost Ghost Stories, ed. Mike Ashley
British Library 978-0712-35266-6, 20 September 2018, 336pp, £8.99.
A figure emerges from a painting to pursue a bitter vengeance; the last
transmission of a dying man haunts the airwaves, seeking to reveal his
murderer; a treasure hunt disturbs an ancient presence in the silence of
a lost tomb.
From the vaults of the British Library comes a new
anthology celebrating the best works of forgotten, never since
republished, supernatural fiction from the early 20th century.
Waiting within are malevolent spirits eager to possess the living and
mysterious spectral guardians a diverse host of phantoms exhumed from
the rare pages of literary magazines and newspaper serials to thrill
once more.
Mortal Echoes. Encounters with the End, ed. Greg Buzwell
British Library 978-0712-35281-9, 4 October 2018, 288pp, £8.99.
A strange figure fortells tragedy on the railway tracks. A plague
threatens to encroach upon an isolated castle. The daughter of an
eccentric scientist falls victim to a poisonous curse. The stories in
this anthology depict the haunting moment when characters come
face-to-face with their own mortality. Spanning two centuries, Mortal
Echoes features some of the finest writers in the English language
including Edgar Allan Poe, Graham Greene, May Sinclair and H. G. Wells.
Intriguing, unsettling and often strangely amusing, this collection
explores humanitys transient existence, and what it means to be alive.
Spirits of the Season. Christmas Hauntings, ed. Tanya Kirk
British Library 978-0712352529, 18 October 2018, 288pp, £8.99.
Festive cheer turns to maddening fear in this new collection of seasonal
hauntings, presenting the best Christmas ghost stories from the 1850s
to the 1960s.
The traditional trappings of the holiday are
turned upside down as restless spirits disrupt the merry games of the
living, Christmas trees teem with spiteful pagan presences and the Devil
himself treads the boards at the village pantomime.
As the cold
night of winter closes in and the glow of the hearth begins to flicker
and fade, the uninvited visitors gather in the dark in this distinctive
assortment of haunting tales.
The Platform Edge. Uncanny Tales of the Railways, ed. Mike Ashley
British Library 978-0712-35203-1, 18 January 2019, 256pp, £8.99.
Howling down the tunnels comes a new collection showcasing the greatest
stories of strange happenings on the tracks, many of which are
republished here for the first time since their original departure.
Waiting
beyond the barrier are ghostly travelling companions bent on disturbing
the commutes of the living, a subway car disappearing into a different
dimension without a trace, and a man's greatest fears realized on the
ghost train of a carnival.
An express ticket to unforgettable
journeys into the supernatural, from the open railways of Europe and
America to the pressing dark of the tube.
The Face in the Glass. The Gothic Tales of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, ed. Greg Buzwell
British Library 978-0712-35208-6, 1 February 2019, 352pp, £8.99.
A young girl whose love for her fiance continues even after her death; a
sinister old lady with claw-like hands who cares little for the
qualities of her companions provided they are young and full of life;
and a haunted mirror that foretells of approaching death for those who
gaze into its depths.
These are just some of the haunting tales
gathered together in this macabre collection of short stories. Reissued
in the Tales of the Weird series and introduced by British Library
curator Greg Buzwell, The Face in the Glass is the first selection of
Mary Elizabeth Braddon's supernatural short stories to be widely
available in more than 100 years.
By turns curious, sinister, haunting and terrifying, each tale explores the dark shadows beyond the rational world.
The Weird Tales of William Hope Hodgson, ed. Xavier Aldana Reyes
British Library 978-0712-35233-8, 4 April 2019, 288pp, £8.99.
A splash of something huge resounds through the sea-fog. In the
stillness of a dark room, some unspeakable evil is making its approach.
This
new selection offers the most chilling and unsettling of Hodgson's
short fiction, from encounters with abominations at sea to fireside
tales of otherworldly forces from his inventive `occult detective'
character Carnacki, the ghost finder.
A master of conjuring
atmosphere, when the horror inevitably arrives it is delivered with
breathtaking pace and the author's unique evocation of overwhelming
panic.
Doorway to Dilemma. Bewildering Tales of Dark Fantasy, ed. Mike Ashley
British Library 978-0712-35263-5, 3 May 2019, 272pp, £8.99.
Between horror and fantasy lies a world in which the inexplicable
remains unsolved and the rational mind is assailed by impossible
questions. Welcome to the realm of Dark Fantasy, where safe answers are
beyond reach and accounts of unanswerable dilemma find their home.
Delving
deep into the sub-genre, fiction expert Mike Ashley has gathered an
unsettling mixture of twisted tales, encounters with logic-defying
creatures and nightmarish fables certain to perplex, beguile and of
course, entertain.
Evil Roots. Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic, ed. Daisy Butcher
British Library 978-0712352291, 22 August 2019, 272pp, £8.99.
Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of
strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the
'killer plant' trope in fiction, film and video games.
Before the Demogorgon of
Stranger Things
and the appearance of Mario's iconic foe the Piranha Plant, writers of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were exploring the lethal
potential of vegetable life, inspired by new carnivorous species
discovered on expeditions into the deep jungles of the world and
breakthroughs in the grafting and genetics disciplines of botany.
Suddenly,
the exotic orchid could become a curiously alluring, yet unsettlingly
bloodthirsty menace; the beautifully sprawling wisteria of the stately
home could become anything but civilized, and the experimentation of
botanists weening new shoots on their own blood could become fuel for a
new genre of horticultural nightmare. Every strain of vegetable threat
(and one deadly fungus) can be found within this new collection, representing the very best tales from the undergrowth.
Promethean Horrors. Classic Stories of Mad Science, ed. Xavier Aldana Reyes
British Library 978-0712-35284-0, 19 September 2019, 240pp, £8.99.
From the imaginations of Gothic short-story writers such as Edgar Allen
Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley and later weirdists such as H.P.
Lovecraft came one of the most complex of villains - the mad scientist.
Promethean Horrors
presents some of the greatest mad scientists ever created, as each
cautionary tale explores the consequences of pushing nature too far.
These savants take many forms: there are malcontents who strive to
create poisonous humans; technologists obsessed with genetic splicing;
mesmerists interested in the way consciousness operates after death and
inventors who believe in a hidden reality. United by an unhealthy
obsession with wanting to reach beyond their circumstances, these mad
scientists are marked by their magical capacity to alter the present, a
gift that always comes at a price. . .
Roarings From Further Out. Four Weird Novellas by Algernon Blackwood, ed. Xavier Aldana Reyes
British Library 978-0712-35305-2, 3 October 2019, 288pp, £8.99.
From one of the greatest and most prolific authors of twentieth century
weird fiction come four of the very best strange stories ever told.
The Willows: Two
men become stranded on an island in the Danube delta, only to find that
they might be in the domain of some greater power from beyond the
limits of human experience.
The Wendigo: A hunting party in Ontario begin to fear that they are being stalked by an entity thought to be confined to legend.
The Man Whom the Trees Loved: A couple is driven apart as the husband is enthralled by the possessive and jealous spirits dwelling in the nearby forest.
Ancient Sorceries: In
conversation with the occult detective and physician Dr. John Silence, a
traveler relates his nightmarish visit to a strange town in Northern
France, and the maddening secret from his past revealed by its
inhabitants.
Tales of the Tattooed. An Anthology of Ink, ed. John Miller
British Library, 1 November 2019, £8.99.
The excruciating beauty, exoticism and mystery of tattoos is laid
bare in this new collection of 12 stories ranging from the 1880s to
1940s. Uncovering the history of the tattoo in classic
fiction for the first time, this original selection depicts the tattoo
as a catalyst for scandal in society, as a symbol for an unknowable
supernatural force, and as transcendent living art merging the spirits
of a tattooer and his or her living canvas.
Featuring previously
hidden works from the pages of rare literary magazines such as 'The
Starfish Tattoo' alongside such classics of the genre as Tanizaki's 'The
Tattooer' and Saki's 'The Background', this exploration of the tattoo
in fiction is guaranteed to leave an indelible impression.
The Outcast and Other Dark Tales by E. F. Benson, edited by Mike Ashley
British Library 978-071235386-1, 19 March 2020, 288pp, £8.99.
By a selection of disturbing details it is not very difficult to induce in a reader an uneasy frame of mind which, carefully worked up, paves the way for terror. — E. F. Benson A grisly spirit turns travelling companion for the unwitting passenger of a London bus; a repulsive neighbour returns from the grave, rejected by the very earth; an innocuous back garden becomes the stage for a nightmare encounter with druidic sacrifice.
From deep in the British Library vaults emerges a new selection of E. F. Benson's most innovative, spine-tingling and satisfyingly dark 'spook stories'. Complete with an introduction exploring the fascinating story of Benson's life, and including the never-before-republished story 'Billy Comes Through', this volume hails the chilling return of an experimental master to whom writers of supernatural fiction have long been indebted.
A Phantom Lover and Other Dark Tales by Vernon Lee, edited by Mike Ashley
British Library 978-071235381-6, 16 April 2020, 288pp, £8.99.
"
...Lee is as dangerous and uncanny as she is intelligent, which is saying a great deal."—Henry James
During
her lifetime Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee, was referred to as
'the greatest of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction', and
yet today she remains on the periphery of the genre. This collection of
her uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was
once considered among the best of the genre, and why she deserves to
return to those ranks today.
From modernised folk tales such as
'Marsyas in Flanders' and 'The Legend of Madame Krasinska' to ingenious
psychological hauntings such as the titular 'A Phantom Lover' and 'A
Wicked Voice', Lee's own voice is just as distinctive and captivating -
her weird imaginings just as freshly unsettling - as in her
fin-de-siècle heyday.
Into the Darkening Fog, Eerie Tales from the Weird City, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley
British Library 978-071235376-2, 20 August 2020, 320pp, £8.99.
'Outside, where the air was foggy, the square was noiseless, save for an occasional hoot of a motor passing into the streets. By degrees I found the light growing rather dim, as if the fog had penetrated into the room...'
As the smoky dark sweeps across the capital, strange stories emerge from the night. A séance reveals a ghastly secret in the murk of Regent's Canal. From south of the Thames come chilling reports of a spring-heeled spectre, and in Stoke Newington rumours abound of an opening to another world among the quiet alleys.
Join Elizabeth Dearnley on this atmospheric tour through a shadowy London, a city which has long inspired writers of the weird and uncanny. Waiting in the hazy streets are eerie tales from Charlotte Riddell, Lettice Galbraith and Violet Hunt, along with haunting pieces by Virginia Woolf, Arthur Machen, Sam Selvon and many more.
, edited by John Miller
British Library 978-071235342-7, 27 August 2020, 240pp, £8.99.
Folk horror meets classic ghost stories in this new Tales of the Weird anthology
Woods play a crucial and recurring role in horror, fantasy, the Gothic
and the weird. They are places in which strange things happen, where it
is easy to lose your way. Supernatural creatures thrive in the thickets.
Trees reach into underworlds of pagan myth and magic. Forests are full
of ghosts.
Lining the path through this realm of folklore and
fear are twelve stories from across Britain, telling tales of whispering
voices and maddening sights from deep in the Yorkshire Dales to the
ancient hills of Gwent and the eerie quiet of the forests of Dartmoor.
Immerse yourself in this collection of classic tales celebrating the
enduring power of our natural spaces to enthral and terrorise our
senses.
Queens of the Abyss. Lost Stories from the Women of the Weird, edited by Mike Ashley
British Library 978-071235391-5, 24 September 2020, 352pp, £8.99.
This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors.
It is too often accepted that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake - but this is far from the truth. This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors.
See the darker side of The Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett and the sensitively-drawn nightmares of Marie Corelli and Violet Quirk. Hear the captivating voices of Weird Tales magazine contributors Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Greye La Spina and Margaret St Clair, and bow down to the sensational, surreal and challenging writers who broke down the barriers of the day. Featuring material never before republished, from the abyssal depths of the British Library vaults.
, edited by Tanya Kirk
British Library 978-071235323-6, 15 October 2020, 224pp, £8.99.
'The tiles of the hall floor were as pretty as ever, as cold as ever, and bore, as always on Christmas Eve, the trickling pattern of dark blood.' The gifts are unwrapped, the feast has been consumed and the fire is well fed -- but the ghosts are still hungry. The ghosts are at the door.
Welcome to a new collection of Christmas nightmares, ushering in a fresh host of ghastly phantoms and otherworldly intruders bent on ruining, or partaking in, the most wonderful time of the year.
With classic tales from Algernon Blackwood, Elizabeth Bowen, Charlotte Riddell and L. P. Hartley jostling with rare pieces from the sleeping periodicals and literary magazines of the British Library collections, it's time to open the door and let the real festivities begin.
Dangerous Dimensions. Mind-bending Tales of the Mathematical Weird, edited by Henry Bartholomew
British Library 978-071235368-7, 21 January 2021, 336, £8.99.
'I have stood on the dim shore beyond time and matter and seen it. It moves through strange curves and outrageous angles. Some day I shall travel in time and meet it face to face.' Unlike nineteenth-century Gothic fiction, which tends to fixate on the past, the haunted and the ghostly, early weird fiction probes the very boundaries of reality the laws and limits of time, space and matter. Here, unimaginable terrors lurk in hitherto unknown mirror dimensions, calamities in ultra-space threaten to wipe clean all evidence of our universe and experiments in non-Euclidean geometry lead to sickening consequences.
In twelve speculative tales of our universe's mathematics and physics gone awry, this new anthology presents an abundance of curiosities and terrors with stories from Jorge Luis Borges, Miriam Allen deFord, Frank Belknap Long and Algernon Blackwood.
Heavy Weather. Tales of Stranger Climes, edited by Kevan Manwaring
British Library 978-071235358-8. 18 February 2021, 320pp, £8.99.
Since Odysseus' curious crew first unleashed the bag of winds gifted to him by Aeolus, the God of Winds, literature has been awash with tales of bad or strange weather. From the flood myths of Babylon, the Mahabharata and the Bible, to twentieth-century psychological storms, this foray into troubled waters, malicious heat waves, vengeful winters, hurricanes and hailstones, offers the perfect read on a rainy day - or night.
Featuring tales of unearthly climatic phenomena from some of the finest writers in the English language including Algernon Blackwood, Herman Melville, William Hope Hodgson, Edgar Allan Poe and more, this collection of weird tales will delight and disturb.
Minor Hauntings. Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth, edited by Jen Baker
British Library 978-071235319-9, 20 May 2021, 272pp, £8.99.
There was a faint rustling sound, like some small silk thing blown in a gentle breeze. He sat up straight, stark and scared, and a small wooden voice spoke in the stillness.
“Pa-pa,” it said, with a break between the syllables.From living dolls to spirits wandering in search of solace or vengeance, the ghostly youth is one of the most enduring phenomena of supernatural fiction, its roots stretching back into the realms of folklore and superstition. In this spine-tingling new collection Jen Baker gathers a selection of the most chilling hauntings and encounters with ghostly children, expertly paired with notes and extracts from the folklore and legends which inspired them.
Reviving obscure stories from Victorian periodicals alongside nail- biting episodes from master storytellers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, M. R. James and Margery Lawrence, this is a collection by turns enchanting, moving and thoroughly frightening.
Crawling Horror. Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird, edited by Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf
British Library 978-071235349-6, 17 June 2021, £8.99.
‘Its long antennae waved inquiringly back and forth, its tiny eyes sparkled black with crimson points, and then it began to run. The Professor caught it in his hand as it toppled from the edge of the counter. It bit him.’ A brush with a killer hornet upends a reverend’s life. A moth wreaks a strange vengeance on an entomologist. Bees deliver a supernatural dilemma to a mother-to-be. This new anthology offers a broad range of stories from the long history of insect literature, where six-legged beasts play many roles from lethal enemies to ethereal messengers.
With expert notes on how each tale contributed to insect horror literature, Janette Leaf and Daisy Butcher are your field guides for a tour through classic insect encounters from the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson, Clare Winger Harris and many more.
Cornish Horrors. Tales from the Land's End, edited by Joan Passey
British Library 978-071235399-1, 22 July 2021, 384pp, £8.99.
A mariner inherits a skull that screams incessantly along with the roar of the sea; a phantom hare stalks the moors to deliver justice for a crime long dead; a man witnesses a murder in the woods near St. Ives, only to wonder whether it was he himself who committed the crime.
Offering a bounty of lost or forgotten strange and Gothic tales set in Cornwall, Cornish Horrors explores the rich folklore and traditions of the region in a journey through mines, local mythology, shipwrecks, seascapes, and the coming of the railway and tourism.
With stories by Gothic luminaries such as Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe, this new collection also features chilling yarns of the haunted peninsula from a host of underappreciated writers from the past two centuries.
I Am Stone. The Gothic Weird Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist, edited by Daniel Pietersen
British Library 978-071235400-4, 19 August 2021, 320pp, £8.99.
‘The first thing my dazed eyes fell upon was the mirror of black glass... She held it so that I might gaze into its depths. And there, with a cry of amazement and fear, I saw the shadow of the Basilisk.’ Through odysseys across dreamlike lands, Gothic love affairs haunted by the shadow of death and uncanny episodes from the Peak country, the portrait of a unique writer of the strange tale emerges. With his florid, illustrative style and powerful imagination, R. Murray Gilchrist’s impact on the weird fiction genre is unmistakable – and yet his name fell into obscurity following his death.
Exploring tales of annihilation and shattered identities, fatalistic romances, bewildering visions of the sublime and mythological evils preying on the innocent, this new anthology is a journey through an entrancing and influential oeuvre essential for any reader of the weird.
Randall's Round. Nine Nightmares by Eleanor Scott, edited by Aaron Worth
British Library 978-071235405-9, 15 September 2021, 240pp, £8.99.
'These stories have all had their origins in dreams... Terrifying enough to the dreamer... I hope that some readers will experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them.' A malignant entity answers the call of an ancient curse on the coast of Brittany; a traveller’s curiosity delivers him to an abominable Hallowe’en ritual; the curious new owner of a haunted mansion discovers something far worse than ghosts in the night.
Randalls Round has long been revered by devotees of the weird tale. First published in 1929, its stories of ritualistic folk horror and M. R. James-inspired accounts of ancient forces terrorising humanity are thoroughly deserving of wider recognition. This collection includes a new introduction exploring Eleanor Scott’s impact on weird and folk horror fiction, and two chilling stories by N. Dennett – speculated to be another of the author’s pseudonyms.
Sunless Solstice. Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights, edited by Lucy Evans & Tanya Kirk
British Library 978-071235410-3, 21 October 2021, 288pp, £8.99.
Like any other boy I expected ghost stories at Christmas, that was the time for them. What I had not expected, and now feared, was that such things should actually become real. Strange things happen on the dark wintry nights of December. Welcome to a new collection of haunting Christmas tales, ranging from traditional Victorian chillers to weird and uncanny episodes by twentieth-century horror masters including Daphne du Maurier and Robert Aickman.
Lurking in the blizzard are menacing cat spirits, vengeful trees, malignant forces on the mountainside and a skater skirting the line between the mortal and spiritual realms. Wrap up warm – and prepare for the longest nights of all.
Shadows on the Wall. Dark Tales by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, edited by Mike Ashley
British Library 978-071235406-6, 20 January 2022, 304pp, £8.99.
Suddenly
he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the
furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the
shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered.
The disquieting tales of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman explore a world of
contrast, where the supernatural erupts out of authentically drawn
portraits of New England life. This is a world of witchcraft, secrecy,
domestic spaces turned uncanny and ancestral vengeances inflicted upon
the unfortunates of the present.
Collecting the best of the
author’s strange tales – including 'The White Shawl', which was
unpublished during her lifetime – this volume casts a light on an
underappreciated contributor to weird fiction and the shadowy corners of
a dark imagination.
The Ghost Slayers. Thrilling Tales of Occult Detection, edited by Mike Ashley
British Library 978-071235416-5, 24 March 2022, 288pp, £8.99.
Occult or psychic detective tales have been chilling readers for almost as long as there have been ghost stories. This beguiling subgenre follows specialists in occult lore – often with years of arcane training – investigating strange supernatural occurrences and pitting their wits against the bizarre and inexplicable.
With tales featuring the most prominent psychic detectives such as William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, the Ghost Finder and Algernon Blackwood’s Dr. Silence, this new collection also includes rare and never-before-reprinted cases investigated by the likes of Flaxman Low, Cosmo Thor, Aylmer Vance and Mesmer Milann.
The Night Wire and Other Tales of Weird Media, edited by Aaron Worth
British Library 9
78-0712354110, 31 May 2022, 320pp, £9.99.
A mysterious radio signal reports cosmic doom from an otherworldly
location. Photography and X-ray evidence suggests there may be some
truth to a sculptor’s claim that he has created a god. A spectral
projection sows terror amid the flickering light of the cinema. From the
whispering wires of the telegraph and ghostly images of the
daguerreotype to the disembodied voices of the phonograph and radio, the
new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave their
users miraculous new powers – and new nightmares. After all, if Graham
Bell’s magical device could connect us with loved ones a half a world
away, what was to stop it from reaching out and touching the dead – or
something worse?
Tracing this fiction of fear from the 1890s to
the 1950s, this new collection brings together the best tales of haunted
or uncanny media from classic – and unjustly neglected – writers of the
supernatural.
Our Haunted Shores. Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles, edited by Emily Alder, Jimmy Packhamm and Joan Passey
British Library 978-0712354219, 23 June 2022, 320pp, £9.99.
The sea that night sang rather than chanted;
all along the far-running shore a rising tide dropped thick foam, and
the waves, white-crested, came steadily in with the swing of a
deliberate purpose.
From foreboding cliffs and
lonely lighthouses to rumbling shingles and silted estuaries, the coasts
of the British Isles have stoked the imaginations of storytellers for
millennia, lending a rich literary significance to these spaces between
land and sea. For those who choose to explore these shores, generations
of ghosts, sea-spirits, fairies and tentacled monsters come and go with
the tide.
This new collection of fifteen short stories, six folk
tales and four poems ranging from 1789 to 1933 offers a chilling
literary tour of the coasts of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of
Man, including haunting pieces by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Bram Stoker
and Charlotte Riddell.
The Horned God. Weird Tales of the Great God Pan, edited by Michael Wheatley
British Library 9
78-0712354967, 18 August 2022, 288pp, £9.99
The
pipe music shrilled suddenly around her, seeming to come from the
bushes at her very feet, and at the same moment the great beast slewed
round and bore directly down upon her.
In 1894,
Arthur Machen’s landmark novella The Great God Pan was published,
sparking a resurgence of literary fascination with the figure of the
pagan goat god. Tales from a broad spectrum of writers - from E M
Forster to prolific pulpsters such as Greye Le Spina - took the god’s
rebellious and chaotic influence as their subject, spinning beguiling
tales of society turned upside down and the forces of nature compelling
protagonists to ecstatic heights or bizarre dooms.
Selecting an
eclectic cross-section of tales and short poems from this boom of
Pan-centric literature – many first published in the influential Weird
Tales magazine – this new collection examines the roots of a cultural
phenomenon and showcases Pan’s potential to introduce themes of queer
awakening and celebrations of the transgressive into the thrillingly
weird stories in which he was invoked.
Spectral Sounds. Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird, edited by Mannon Burz-Labrande
British Library 978-0712354172, 22 September 2022, 288pp, £9.99
My
bell had rung. I sat up, terrified by the unusual sound, which seemed
to go on jangling through the darkness. My hands shook so that I
couldn’t find the matches... I began to think I must have been dreaming;
but I looked at the bell against the wall, and there was the little
hammer still quivering...
From the ringing of a
disconnected bell to footsteps in the halls of an abandoned house and
the whisper of an unexplained voice in the ear, uncanny sounds are often
the heralds of danger and terror in Gothic and supernatural fiction.
Yet, when examining the range of stories which best manipulate our aural
sense it is clear that there is more room to explore how significant
sound is to our experience of fear.
This new collection presents
tales in which ghosts interact with the corporeal world through noise,
bodiless voices wander through the ether, and the objects whose sounds
we trust, like the telephone, betray us. Featuring obscure pieces
alongside some of the pioneers of the weird including B M Croker,
Algernon Blackwood, H D Everett and Sheridan Le Fanu.
Haunters at the Hearth. Eerie Tales for Christmas Nights, edited by Lucy Evans and Tanya Kirk
British Library 978-0712354271, 13 October 2022, 288pp, £9.99
In
the comfortable coffee-room of the old Boar’s Head, half a dozen
guests, principally commercial travellers, sat talking by the light of
the fire. The talk had drifted from trade to politics, from politics to
religion, and so by easy stages to the supernatural...
In
the winter months, the cosiness of the hearth and armchair – or reading
nook of choice – comes together with tales of creeping horror to form
an enduring irresistible tradition of supernatural tales told – and read
– in the long hours of darkness.
Pairing up once again, Lucy
Evans and Tanya Kirk present a new selection of vintage hearthside
chillers, including strange tales of souls on the boundaries of life
from W F Harvey and A M Burrage, a piece in which Christmas tree
shopping leads to dire misfortune from Mildred Clingerman and a tale of
jolly carolling gone sinister by L P Hartley.
Polar Horrors. Thrilling Tales From the Ends of the Earth, edited by John Miller
British Library 9
78-0712354424, 10 November 2022, 256pp, £9.99
Fired up by the accounts of exploring parties in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, writers of the weird and supernatural
began to construct a literary Arctic and Antarctic in which terrors lay
undiscovered in the ice and gateways to bizarre hidden worlds were
waiting. From James Hogg’s lurid North Pole narrative of life amongst
polar bears in ‘The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon’ to tales of
mad science and ghostly visitations among the wind-blown expanse of the
southern continent, this new collection showcases a wealth of neglected
material and an overlooked niche of literature obsessed with the limits
of human experience.
Pulp tales of alien forces emerging from the
ice and a battle between hunter and invisible man-eating duck creature
drift alongside modern horror from indigenous Arctic voices to show the
extent and endurance of the lure of these sublime landscapes.
(* originally published 17 October 2018; revised, 19 April 2019; 19 March 2022; 18 June 2022.)
