Peter Haining – The Craft Of Terror

Peter Haining  (ed.) – The Craft Of Terror (Nel, Dec. 1966, Mews, 1976)

Cover: Tony Masero

Introduction – Peter Haining

Matthew Lewis – The Monk
Horace Walpole – The Castle Of Otranto
Clara Reeve – The Old English Baron
William Beckford – Vathek
William Godwin – Caleb Williams
Charles Brockden Brown – Wieland, or The Transformation
Charles Maturin – Melmoth The Wanderer
Mary Shelley – The Last Man
Edward Bulwer Lytton – The Cult Of Zanoni
Thomas Prest – The Feast Of blood
Eugene Sue – The Mysteries Of Paris
J. S. Le Fanu – The House By The Churchyard
William Harrison Ainsworth – The Elixir Of Life
Edgar Allan Poe – Metzengerstein

Bibliography

An early stab at what would become Great British Tales Of Terror. All bar the Poe story are extracts from the novels of the same name and it makes for an entertaining read.  Watch out for Edmund, the alleged ‘hero’ of Clara Reeve’s classic, though. Every time somebody speaks to him, he falls to his knees sobbing and beseeching and/ or praising his creator. It gets on your tits after a bit. The extract from Varney The Vampyre or, The Feast Of Blood, wrongly credited to Prest, is the opening chapter yet again. The Le Fanu is usually reproduced as The Narrative Of The Ghost Of A Hand.

Nel-Four Square edition