Hugh Lamb – Terror By Gaslight

Terror by Gaslight – ed. Hugh Lamb (W.H. Allen, 1975, Coronet, 1977)

Preface – Hugh Lamb

Robert Barr – Purification
Grant Allen – The Beckoning Hand
Rhoda Broughton – Nothing But The Truth
Charles Ollier – The Haunted House Of Paddington
Edwin Lester Arnold – A Dreadful Night
Andrew Lang – The House Of Strange Stories
Erckmann-Chatrian – The Invisible Eye
Jonas Lie – The Earth Draws
Fitz-James O’Brien – The Wondersmith
R. Murray Gilchrist – The Basilisk
S. Baring Gould – A Dead Man’s Teeth
Dick Donovan – The Doomed Man
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward – Kentucky’s Ghost
Anon – The Weird Woman

Another great helping of Victorian vileness. Barr’s story comes from his collection “Revenge”, so that’s a clue as to what “Putrification” (and everything else in there) is about. One of Andrew Lang’s “Strange Stories” stands head and shoulders above the others – which are, admittedly, on the insipid side – and reads like the template for E. F. Benson’s “The Bus Conductor.”