Anonymous (Margaret Armour) – The Eerie Book

Anonymous (Margaret Armour) – The Eerie Book  (Castle, 1981: originally J. Shiells & Co, 1898)

W. B. MacDougall

Edgar Allen Poe – The Masque Of The Red Death
G. W. M. Reynolds – The Iron Coffin (From Faust: A Romance)
Hans Anderson – The Mother And The Dead Child
Robert Hunt – Tregeagle
Catherine Crowe – The Dutch Officer’s Story
Edgar Allen Poe – The Cask of Amontillado
Anonymous – Earl Beadie’s Card Game
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – Frankenstein (abridged)
Catherine Crowe – The Garde Chasse
Anonymous – A Dream Of Death
Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile – The Mysterious Horseman
Catherine Crowe – The Blind Beggar Of Odessa
Robert Chambers – The Story Of Major Weir
Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile – Marshall Blucher
Baron de la Motte Fouque – Sir Hulbrande’s Wife
Thomas De Quincey – The Masque (extract from Klosterheim: or, The Masque)

Blurb:
Gothic horror at its best! Spanning the mood and style of authors from Hans Christian Anderson to Edgar Allen Poe, The Eerie Book presents 16 terrifying tales of the macabre and supernatural. This reproduction of a turn-of-the-century classic offers to the reader some of the most engrossing stories of menace ever written.

Mike Ashley – The Dreaming Sex

Mike Ashley  (ed.) – The Dreaming Sex:  Early Tales of Scientific Imagination by Woman   (Peter Owen, 2009)

Introduction
L.T. Meade –  The Blue Laboratory
Mary Shelley –  The Mortal Immortal
Harriet Prescott Spofford –  The Moonstone Mass
Alice W. Fuller –  A Wife Manufactured to Order
Mary Elizabeth Braddon –  Good Lady Ducayne
Mary Wilkins Freeman –  The Hall Bedroom
G.M. Barrows –  The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar
Roquia Sakhawat Hossein –  The Sultana’s Dream
Edith Nisbet –  The Five Senses
Clotilde Graves –  Lady Clanbevan’s Baby
Muriel Pollexfen –  Monsieur Fly-by-Night
Greye La Spina –  The Ultimate Ingredient
Clare Winger Harris –  The Miracle of the Lily
Adeline Knapp –  The Earth Slept: A Vision

Thanks to James Doig for putting me on to this one!

Paul Kane & Marie O’Regan – Mammoth Book Of Body Horror

Paul Kane & Marie O’Regan – The Mammoth Book Of Body Horror  (Robinson, 2012)

Cover design: Carlos Castro

Stuart Gordon – Introduction

Mary Shelley – Transformation
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
H. P. Lovecraft – Herbert West: Re-Animator
John W. Campbell – Who Goes There?
George Langelaan – The Fly
Richard Matheson – ‘Tis The Season To Be Jelly
Stephen King – Survivor Type
Clive Barker – The Body Politic
Robert Bloch – The Chaney Legacy
Ramsey Campbell – The Other Side
Brian Lumley – Fruiting Bodies
Nancy A. Collins – Freaktent
Richard Christian Matheson – Regions Of The Flesh
Michael Marshall Smith – Walking Wounded
Neil Gaiman – Changes
James Herbert – Others
Christopher Fowler – The Look
Alice Henderson – Residue
Graham Masterton – Dog Days
Gemma Files – Black Box
Simon Clark – The Soaring Dead
Barbie Wilde – Polyp
David Moody – Almost Forever
Axelle Carolyn – Butterfly
Conrad Williams – Sticky Eye

Back cover blurb:
25 horrific tales of TRANSFORMATION, MUTATION and CONTAGION

This truly disturbing collection of ‘body horror’ ranges from Mary Shelley’s revelatory ‘Transformation’ to H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Herbert West: Re-Animator’, brought to a new audience by the success of Stuart Gordon’s film ‘Re-Animator’, to George Langelaan’s ‘The Fly’, filmed most recently by David Cronenberg, and a chilling story by Lovecraft’s disciple, Robert Bloch, best known as the author of Psycho.

The term ‘body horror’ has long been used to describe films such as The Thing, based on John W. Campbell’s ‘Who Goes There?’, which is reprinted here, and most recently District 9, but the subgenre did not begin with film.

Here you will find profoundly unsettling stories spanning the entire history of the subgenre by the very best writers of horror ….

Anon – Four Gothic Novels

Anon – Four Gothic Novels   (Oxford University Press, 1994)

Horace Walpole – The Castle Of Otranto
William Beckford – Vathek
Matthew Lewis – The Monk
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein

Blurb
Macabre and melodramatic, set in haunted castles or fantastic landscapes, Gothic tales became fashionable in the late eighteenth century with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Crammed with catastrophe, terror, and ghostly interventions, the novel was an immediate success, and influenced numerous followers: These include William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), which alternates grotesque comedy with scenes of exotic magnificence in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek’s journey to damnation. The Monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis, is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest, set in the sinister Monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid. Frankenstein (1818, 1831) is Mary Shelley’s disturbing and perennially popular tale of a young student who  learns the secret of giving life to a creature made from human relics, with horrific consequences.

This collection illustrates the range and the attraction of the Gothic novel. Extreme and sensational, each of the four printed here is also a powerful psychological story of isolation and monomania.

Rosemary Gray – Gripping Yarns

Rosemary Gray (ed.) – Gripping Yarns (Wordsworth Special Editions, 2008)

Anonymous – One Night Of Horror
————- The Pipe
————- The Puzzle
————- The Closed Cabinet
————- The Alibi
Stacey Aumonier – Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty
————- A Source Of Irritation
————- Where Was Wych Street?
Harold Auten – a Fight To The Finish
Etienne Barsony – The Dancing Bear
Jorgen Wilhelm Bergsoe – The Amputated Arms
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
————- A Tough Tussle
————- A Jug Of Syrup
————- The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
————- John Bartine’s Watch
Algernon Blackwood – a Silent Visitation
————- The Wood Of The Dead
————- A Suspicious Gift
————- Skeleton Lake : An Episode In Camp
George Brame – On The Belgian Coast
John Buchan – The Wind In The Portico
————- The Loathley Opposite
George Washington Cable – The Young Aunt With White Hair
Egerton Castle – The Baron’s Quarry
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Joseph Conrad – The Secret Sharer
————- A Smile Of Fortune
————- The Black Mate
A. R. Cooper – With The Foreign Legion In Gallipoli
Stephen Crane – Manacled
————- An Illusion In Black And White
————- Twelve O’Clock
F. Marion Crawford – By The Waters Of Paradise
Guy De Maupassant – The Wreck
————- The Terror
John Charles Dent – Gagtooth’s Image
Thomas De Quincey – The Avenger
Arthur Conan Doyle – A Foreign Office Romance
————- The Striped Chest
————- The Croxley Master
————- The New Catacomb
————- The King Of The Foxes
————- The Green Flag
————- The Lord Of Chateau Noir
————- The Three Correspondents
————- The Debut Of Bimbashi Joyce
————- The Doings Of Raffles Haw
Arthur Elck – The Tower Room
A. J. Evans – Exploits Of The Escaping Club
J. S. Fletcher – The Lighthouse On Shivering Sand
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – The Shadows On The Wall
E. W. Hornung – The Wrong House
————- The Rest Cure
————- A Bad Night
————- The Spoils Of Sacrilege
Bernard Severin Ingemann – The Sealed Room
Maurus Jokai – Thirteen At Table
Rudyard Kipling – My Own True Ghost Story
————- Bubbling-Well Road
————- At The End Of The Passage
————- The Return Of Imray
————- The City Of Dreadful Night
Leoplod Lewis – A Dreadful Bell
Jack London – Siwash
————- The Man With The Gash
————- Where The Trail Forks
Anselme Marchal – Hoodwinking The Germans
Ferenc Molnar – The Living Death
Frank Norris – A Memorandum Of Sudden Death
————- The Ghost In The Crosstrees
Fitz-James O’Brien – My Wife’s Temper
David Phillips – At A Sap-Head
William Pittinger – The Locomotive Chase In Georgia
A. O. Pollard – I Charge!
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
————- The Hounds Of Fate
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Pavilion On The Links
————- The Sire de Maletroit’s Door
Anthony Trollope – The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box
Edgar Wallace – The Lone House Mystery
————- The Dark Horse
————- Clues
————- Romance In It
————- A Certain Game
————- The Swift Walker
————- Nine Terrible Men
————- The Sickness-Mongo
Edith Wharton – A Bottle Of Perrier
————- The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
————- The Bolted Door
John Taylor Wood – Escape Of General Beckinridge
Walter Wood – How Trooper Potts Won The V.C. On Burnt Hill
E. D. Woodhall – Secret Service Days

Blurb
For those who sometimes long to escape the strictures of modern life or to inject a little more drama and excitement into their workday world, the remedy could be the collection of stories you hold in your hand. Here for the taking are tales of high adventure and low intrigue from masters of the genre like John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson, classics of crime and detection from veteran thriller writers like Edgar Wallace and Arthur Conan Doyle, spine-chillers from the pens of Ambrose Bierce and other purveyors of suspense and horror, and true accounts of courage and survival from heroic and intrepid individuals caught up in the rigours and insanity of war or battling against the elements on gruelling expeditions of discovery and exploration. Between the covers of this crowded volume, Wordsworth Editions has assembled from the work of famous, less well-known and totally unsung writers a treasure trove of rattling good yarns to fire the imagination, chill the blood and perhaps awaken (or reawaken) the spirit of adventure in any reader who dares to plunge in!

Anon – A Century Of Thrillers: From Poe To Arlen

Anon – A Century Of Thrillers: From Poe To Arlen (Daily Express, 1934)

James Agate – Foreword

Wilkie Collins – The Traveller’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed
Wilkie Collins – Mad Monkton
Wilkie Collins – The Biter Bit
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
Micheal Arlen – The Gentleman from America
R. H. Barham – The Leech of Folkstone
R. H. Barham – Jerry Jarvis’ Wig
R. H. Barham – The Spectre of Tappington
R. H. Barham – Singular Passage in the Life of the Late Henry Harris, Doctor of Divinity
Mrs Henry Wood – The Ebony Box
A. J. Alan – My Adventure at Chiselhurst
A. J. Alan – The Hair
Edgar Allan Poe – The Gold Bug
Edgar Allan Poe – The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe – The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe – The Mystery of the Marie Roget
Edgar Allan Poe – The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque of the Red Death
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Roger Malvin’s Burial
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Dr Heidegger’s Experiment
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Grey Champion
Sir Walter Scott – Wandering Willie’s Tale
Sir Walter Scott – The Two Drovers
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkeys Paw
J. S. Le Fanu – Sir Dominick Sarsfield
J. S. Le Fanu – Mr Justice Harbottle
J. S. Le Fanu – Green Tea
Oscar Wilde – The Birthday of the Infanta
Charles Dickens – The Trial For Murder
Charles Dickens – The Story of the Bagmans Murder
Charles Dickens – No 1 Branch Line, The Signalman
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Squires Story
J. S. Fletcher – The Lighthouse of Shivering Sand
Anthony Trollope – Malachi’s Cove
Lord Lytton – The Haunted and the Haunters
Frederick Marryat – The Story of the Greek Slave
Algernon Blackwood – The Woman’s Ghost Story
Algernon Blackwood – Secret Worship
Mrs Oliphant – The Open Door
Ambrose Bierce – The Suitable Surroundings
Ambrose Bierce – One of the Missing
Ambrose Bierce – The Affair at Coulters Notch
Ambrose Bierce – A Tough Tussle
Ambrose Bierce – A Horseman in the Sky

One of the evil clones i mentioned on an earlier Century post.  According to E. F. Bleiler (The Guide To Supernatural Fiction,  Kent State Universtity Press, 1983)

“The CENTURY volumes were one of the results of Depression newspaper wars in Great Britain in the 1930’s. Books of enormous size, they were given as premiums for subscriptions, then taken over by commercial publishing (Hutchinson’s mostly).”

And to think these days we’re happy with the occasional Belles of St. Trinians DVD ….

Dorothy L Sayers – Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror: 2nd Series

Dorothy L Sayers (ed.) –  Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror: 2nd Series (Gollancz, July, 1931)

Help! Cover Wanted!

Dorothy L. Sayers – Introduction

1. Detection & Mystery (25 stories by Sayers, M. P. Shiel, H. C. Bailey, Robert Barr, Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes & Co.)

2. Mystery and Horror:

A.J. Alan – My Adventure in Norfolk
Stacy Aumonier – Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty
R. H. Barham – The Leech of Folkestone
Max Beerbohm – A.V. Laider
E.F. Benson – The Room in the Tower
J.D. Beresford – Cut-Throat Farm
Ambrose  Bierce – The Damned Thing
Algernon Blackwood – Secret Worship
Mrs. E. Bland  (Edith Nesbit) – No. 17
Douglas G. Browne – The Queer Door
A.M. Burrage – The Waxwork
Wilkie Collins – Mad Monkton
Alan Cunningham – The Haunted Ships
Clemence Dane – The King Waits
Walter de la Mare – The Tree
S.L. Dennis – The Second Awakening of a Magician
Charles Dickens – No.1 Branch Line: The Signalman
Ford Madox Ford – Reisenberg
Violet Hunt – The Prayer
W.F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
Holloway Horn – The Old Man
W.W. Jacobs – The Well
Edgar Jepson – The Resurgent Mysteries
J.S. Le Fanu – Mr. Justice Harbottle
E. Bulwer-Lytton – The Haunted and the Haunters
Arthur Machen – The Great Return
Frederick Marryat – The Story of the Greek Slave
John Masefield – Anty Blight
John Metcalfe – The Double Admiral
Mrs. Oliphant – The Library Window
Barry Pain – Rose,  Rose
Eden Phillpotts – The Iron Pineapple
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Sir A. Quiller-Couch – The Roll-Call of the Reef
Naomi Royde-Smith – Mangaroo
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
M. P. Shiel – The Primate of the Rose
Henry Spicer – Called to the Rescue
Hugh Walpole – The Enemy
H. G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
Edward Lucas White – Lukundoo

Peter Haining – Classic Horror Omnibus

Peter Haining – Classic Horror Omnibus Volume 1 (New English Library, 1979)

Peter Haining – Introduction

Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Clemence Housman – The Werewolf
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Gaston Leroux – The Phantom Of The Opera

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