Donald Speed – My Blood Ran Cold

Donald Speed (ed.) – My Blood Ran Cold (Corgi Books, 1966)

Foreword by Donald Speed

Michael Baldwin – Promise Me Tonight
Francis King – The Crack
John Burke – Incubus For Hire
Alexander Hamilton – Not Enough Poison
Thomas Burke – The Bird
Richard Nettell – The Continual Dew
Jesse Bier – Father And Son
Stan Gooch – A Time For Living
Patrick Boyle – The Lake
John Brunner – Such Stuff
Jens Peter Jacobsen – Plague At Bergamo
Martin Ford – Quittance
Hugh Atkinson – The Medusa Touch
Richard Kenneggy – The Gates
Leonard Ansell – On With The New
Simon Gray – The Holman Candidate

Thanks to Peter C. of Vault for posting the contents of this one.

Ronald Holmes – Macabre Military Stories

Ronald Holmes (ed.) – Macabre Military Stories (Leo Cooper, 1979)

Washington Irving – The Bold Dragoon
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch – The Roll Call of the Reef
Barbara Softly – Master Ghost & I
Robert Sheckley – The Battle
Evan Hunter – The Scarlet King
Seabury Quinn – And Give Us Yesterday
Robert Bloch – The Living Dead
C E Montague – Trade Report Only
Arthur Machen – The Soldiers’ Rest
Captain George Eliot – The Copper Bowl
James Grant – The Phantom Regiment
B W Saville – Apparitions
John Galt – The Black Ferry

It was only while revamping the Vault *ahem* “site” recently that I noticed the names ‘Ron Holmes’, ‘Ronald Holmes’ and ‘Ronald E. Holmes’ were turning up with some frequency and stap me if they’re not all the same fellow and the author of Witchfinder General (Herbert Jenkings, 1966, Pan 1968) is also responsible for The Legend Of Sawney Beane (Muller, 1975: Mews, 1976), Witchcraft In British History and, as editor, Macabre Railway Stories (Star, 1983). Not a bad track record by any means.

H. P. Lovecraft Omnibus III – The Haunter Of The Dark

H. P. Lovecraft Omnibus III – The Haunter Of The Dark (Grafton, 1985, 1986)

Illustration: Tim White

Introduction – August Derleth

The Outsider
The Rats In The Walls
Pickman’s Model
The Call Of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer In Darkness
The Colour Out Of Space
The Haunter Of The Dark
The Thing On The Doorstep
The Music Of Erich Zann
The Lurking Fear
The Picture In The House
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out Of Time

Anon – Tales Of The Dead

Anon – Tales Of The Dead: Ghost Stories Of The Villa Diodati (Gothic Society, 1992)

(originally Fantasmagoriana (Paris, 1812: London, 1813)

Simon Marsden

Introduction – Terry Hale

Anon – The Family Portraits
Friedrich Shultz – The Fated Hour
Friedrich Shultz – The Death’s Head
Friedrich Shultz – The Dead-Bride
Sarah Elizabeth Brown Utterson – The Storm
J. K. Musaus – The Spectre Barber

From the back cover blurb:

This highly influential little book was the first English translation of the Famous Fantasmagoriana; Ou Recueil d’Histories d’Apparitions, de Spectres, Revenans, Fantomes, etc. which was of such critical importance in the development of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Polidori’s The Vampyre. Lord Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Dr. Polidori were all inspired by the book to write their own ghost stories.

Along with their classy quarterly magazine Udolpho, Jennie Gray’s Gothic Society were responsible for a series of invaluable reprints (including an edition of Peter Haining’s The Shilling Shockers). The stories in Tales Of The Dead are some way short of terrifying when stood against the blood-splattered, nihilistic likes of M. G. Lewis (but then most novels are) or Hoffman’s caper The Sandman, but they’re entertaining enough on their own slightly hysterical terms.

Marjorie Bowen reprinted a number of these in her Great Tales Of Horror (John Lane, 1933).

Angus Black – The Devil’s Coven

Angus Black (ed) – The Devil’s Coven: Classic Stories Of Scottish Witchcraft (New English Library, May 1972)

 

Angus Black – Introduction

George Sinclair – Anent Mother Jackson: Her Witchcraft. From Satan’s Invisible World Discovered
Robert Burns – Tam O’Shanter
Sir Walter Scott – The Tale Of Tod Lapraik
James Hogg – The Hunt Of Eildon
John Howell – Major Weir’s Coach
Robert Louis Stevenson – Thrawn Janet
Eliza Lynn Linton – The Island Witches
Anon – The Warlock Of Duneblane
John Buchan – Skule Skerry

“In Scotland the witch fires began to blaze after the triumph of John Knox and the Reformation and in no country did they blaze more steadily and for so long a period of time”.  – Douglass Bliss

Scotland is a storehouse of supernatural stories second to none in the world. Many of the best relate specifically to witchcraft.

Leading anthologist, Angus Black, has dipped deep into the nation’s charnel house to produce this superlative collection. 

Patrick McGrath & Bradford Morrow – The New Gothic

Patrick McGrath & Bradford Morrow (eds.) – The Picador Book Of The New Gothic (Picador, 1993)

Cover photograph: Simon Marsden

Were Poe to come across this collection he might perhaps be bewildered by the various accents and settings of the work, but he would certainly applaud the spirit animating them. This is the New Gothic.

Introduction – Patrick McGrath & Bradford Morrow

Jamaica Kincaid – Ovando
Martin Amis – Horrorday
Jeanette Winterton – Newton
Paul West – Banquo And The Black Banana: The Fierceness Of The Delight Of The Horror
Anne Rice – Freniere
Janice Galloway – Blood
Scott Bradfield – Didn’t She Know
John Hawkes – Regulus And Maximus
Yannick Murphy – The Fish Keeper
Lynne Tillman – A Dead Summer
Joyce Carol Oates – Why Don’t You Come Live With Me It’s Time
Robert Coover – The Dead Queen
Angela Carter – The Merchant Of Shadows
Bradford Morrow – The Road To Nadeja
Ruth Rendell – For Dear Life
Emma Tennant – Rigor Beach
Patrick McGrath – The Smell
Peter Straub – The Kingdom Of Heaven
John Edgar Wideman – Fever
Kathy Acker – J
William T. Vollman – The Grave Of Lost Stories

Julian Lloyd Webber – Short Sharp Shocks

Julian Lloyd Webber (ed.) – Short Sharp Shocks (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990)

Introduction – Julian Lloyd Webber

Bernard Taylor – Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake
Conrad Hill – The Bushmaster
John Collier – De Mortuis
Arthur Machen – The Bright Boy
David Morrell – But at My Back I Always Hear
J. Yen – A Weird Day for Agro
James Kisner – The Litter
Andrea Newman – She’ll Be Company for You
Sydney J. Bounds – A Complete Collection
Leonard P. Carpenter – Dead Week
William Trevor – Miss Smith
Conrad Hill – The Grief Condition
R. Andrew Hall – The Other Woman
R. C. Cook – Green Fingers
Marghanita Laski – The Tower
Francis King – The Doll
William F. Nolan – Dead Call

Son of The Phantom Of The Opera in decent anthology shocker! Somebody’s been ransacking their old Fontana and Pan Horror books and more power to him.
Thanks to Charles “the new Herbert Van Thal!” Black for digging this one up, and ….

… thanks to All Things Horror for providing the cover scan!