Daisy Butcher (ed.) – Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic

Daisy Butcher (ed.) – Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic (British Library, 2019)

Enrique Bernardou

Cover design by Maurico Villamayor

Daisy Butcher – Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorne – Rappaccini’s Daughter
Arthur Conan Doyle – The American’s Tale
Lucy H. Hooper – Carnivorine
Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Giant Wistaria
H.G. Wells – The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
Edmond Nolcini – The Guardian of Mystery Island
M.R. James – The Ash Tree
Ambrose Bierce – A Vine on a House
Howard R. Garis – Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant
William Hope Hodgson – The Voice in the Night
Edith Nesbit – The Pavilion
H.C. McNeile – The Green Death
Abraham Merritt – The Woman of the Wood
Emma Vane – The Moaning Lily

Blurb:
Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) “killer plant” in fiction, film, and video games.
Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s giant wistaria and H. G. Wells’ hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood, and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit’s wandering creepers…
Every strain of vegetable threat (and one deadly fungus) can be found within this new collection, representing the very best tales from the undergrowth of Gothic fiction.

The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories

The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories (Wordsworth Special Editions, 2005)

A. and C. Askew – Aylmer Vance And The Vampire
Honore de Balzac – The Mysterious Mansion
Richard Harris Barham – The Spectre Of Tappington
Ambrose Bierce – The Damned Thing
Miss Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
A. Clergyman – A Ghostly Manifestation
————-  Correspondence On ‘A Ghostly Manifestation’
Wilkie Collins – A Terribly Strange Bed
Charles Dickens – The Story Of The Bagman’s Uncle
————-  To Be Taken With A Grain Of Salt
————-  The Signalman
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brazilian Cat
————-  The Ring Of Thoth
————-  The Lord Of Chateau Noir
————-  The New Catacomb
————-  The Case Of Lady Sannox
————-  The Brown Hand
————-  The Horror Of The Heights
————-  The Terror Of Blue John Gap
————-  The Captain Of The Polestar
————-  How It Happened
————-  Playing With Fire
————-  The Leather Funnel
————-  Lot No. 249
————-  The Los Amigos Fiasco
————-  The Nightmare Room
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Squire’s Story
W. F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
R. S. Hawker – The Botathen Ghost
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
W. H. Hodgson – The Gateway Of The Monster
James Hogg – The Story Of Euphemia Hewit
Violet Hunt – The Prayer
W. W, Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Henry James – The Jolly Corner
M. R. James – A School Story
————-  Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook
————-  Lost Hearts
————-  The Mezzotint
————-  The Ash Tree
————-  Number 13
————-  Count Magnus
————-  ‘Oh, Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’
————-  The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas
————-  The Rose Garden
————-  The Tractate Middoth
————-  Casting The Runes
————-  The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral
————-  Martin’s Close
————-  Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance
————-  The Residence At Whitminster
————-  The Diary Of Mr. Poynter
————-  An Episode In Cathedral History
————-  The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance
————-  Two Doctors
————-  The Haunted Dolls House
————- The Uncommon Prayer Book
————-  A Neighbour’s Landmark
————-  A View From A Hill
————-  A Warning To The Curious
————-  An Evening’s Entertainment
————-  There Was A Man Dwelt By A Graveyard
————-  Rats
————-  After Dark In The Playing Fields
————-  Wailing Well
————-  Stories I Have Tried To Write
Rudyard Kipling – The Mark Of The Beast
Perceval Landon – Thurnley Abbey
John Lang  – Fisher’s Ghost
D. H. Lawrence – The Rocking-Horse Winner
J. S. Le Fanu  An Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungier Street
————-  Narrative Of The Ghost Of A Hand
————-  Green Tea
————-  Madam Crowl’s Ghost
————-  Squire Toby’s Will
————-  Dickon The Devil
————-  The Child That Went With The Fairies
————-  The White Cat Of Drumgunniol
————-  Ghost Stories Of Chapelizod
————-  Wicked Captain Walshawe, Of Wauling
————-  Sir Dominick’s Bargain
————-  Ultor De Lacy
————-  The Vision Of Tom Chuff
————-  Stories Of Lough Guir
Lord Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
Guy De Maupassant – Vendetta
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Howard Pease – In The Cliff Land Of The Dane
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
————-  The Black Cat
A. M. Pushkin – The Ace Of Spades
Saki (H. H. Munro) – Laura
————-  Sredni Vashtar
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
————-  Wandering Willie’s Tale
Robert Louis Stevenson – Markheim
————-  Thrawn Janet
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Edmund Lenthal Swifte – Ghost In The Tower
William Makepeace Thackeray – The Story Of Mary Ancel
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost

thanks to Severance of Vault for typing the contents!

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 ….

Anon – A Century Of Thrillers: Second Series

Anon – A Century Of Thrillers: Second Series (Daily Express, 1935)

Somerset Maugham – The Taipan
Donn Byrne – Tale Of The Piper
George Eliot – The Lifted Veil
M. R. James – Number 13
M. R. James – Rats
M. R. James – Count Magnus
G. K. Chesterton – The Queer Feet
H. G. Wells – Pollock And The Porrah Man
A. J. Alan – My Adventure In Norfolk
Sax Rohmer – Tcheriapin
J. S. Fletcher – The Ivory God
Daniel Defoe – The Apparition Of Mrs Veal
E. F. Benson – The Thing In The Hall
Guy De Maupassant – Night
Guy De Maupassant – The Drowned Man
Guy De Maupassant – Who Knows?
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Oscar Wilde – The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe – The Fall Of The House Of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe – The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands
O. Henry – The Last Leaf
W. W. Jacobs – The Well
Charles Dickens – The Haunted Man And The Ghost’s Bargain
Ambrose Bierce – Moxon’s Master
Ambrose Bierce – The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
Ambrose Bierce – The Damned Thing
W. F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
F. Marion Crawford – The Upper Berth
F. Marion Crawford – Man Overboard!
N. A. Temple Ellis – Diver’s Drops
Sydney Parkman – The Cards
Ashton Wolfe – The Knights Of The Silver Dagger
Frederick Marryat – The Werewolf
J. S. LeFanu – Shalken The Painter
J. S. LeFanu – Carmilla
J. S. LeFanu – The Familiar
Wilkie Collins – Gabriel’s Marriage
Mrs. Gaskell – The Sexton’s Hero

A Century Of Ghost Stories

Anon [Dorothy M. Thomlinson?] (ed.) – A Century Of Ghost Stories (Hutchinson, 1935)

Many thanks to Richard Humphreys who kindly provided this enchanting dust-jacket scan.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Familiar
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea
Cecil Binney – The Saint And The Vicar
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Anthony Gittins – Gibbet Lane
Mrs Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
M.R. James – The Residence At Whitminster
M.R. James – A Warning To The Curious
Sir Edward Bulwer- Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
Walter De La Mare – The Green Room
Miss Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
Edith Wharton – Afterward
Ambrose Bierce – The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
F. Marion Crawford – Man Overboard!
Shane Leslie – In A Glass Dimly
Shane Leslie – The Lord-In-Waiting
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
E.F. Benson – Expiation
E.F. Benson – Pirates
Algernon Blackwood – The Woman’s Ghost Story
Percival Landon – Thurnley Abbey
Oliver Onions – The Rosewood Door
Vernon Lee – The Virgin Of The Seven Daggers
Mrs Oliphant – The Library Window
Ann Bridge – The Song In The House
Violet Hunt – The Operation
Ex-Private X – The Sweeper
Ex-Private X – The Running Tide
W.L. George – Perez
——————–
R. H. Barham – The Spectre Of Tappington
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Grey Champion
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Frederick Marryat – The Werewolf
Charles Dickens – The Story Of The Bagman’s Uncle
E. Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Frederich Von Schiller – The Ghost-Seer
Alan Cunningham – The Haunted Ships
Ludwig Tieck – The Klausenburg
R. S. Hawker – The Bothanon Ghost
George Eliot – The Lifted Veil

A Century Of Ghost Stories (1936) is a much extended edition of the previous year’s Fifty Years Of Ghost Stories which includes only the stories listed above the dotted line (i.e., from Le Fanu’s The Familiar through to W. L. George’s Perez).

Detail from cover of 50 Years Of Ghost Stories provided by All Things Horror

Dennis Wheatley – Satanism and Witches

Dennis Wheatley (ed.) – Satanism and Witches : Essays and Stories: [# 21] (Sphere, 1974)

Benvenuto Cellini – My Experiences In Necromancy
Sax Rohmer – The Witch Finders
William Godwin – The Lancashire Witches
Robert Anthony – The Witch-Baiter
Ronald Seth – The Chambre Ardente Affair
Margaret Murray – An Initiation To Witchcraft
P. T. Barnum – The Spell On witchcraft
Cotton Mather – The Tryals Of The New England Witches
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Salem Mass
Aleister Crowley – The Black Lodge
Betty May – The Sacrifice
Elliott O’Donnell – Sylvan Horrors
Elliott O’Donnell – Vampires, Werewolves, Fox-Women, etc.
Robert Graves – Modern Witchcraft
Anonymous – An Indictment For Witchcraft
Anonymous – A Pact With The Devil
Anonymous – How To Raise A Spirit
Anonymous – The Black Goat Of Brandenberg
Anonymous – The Confession Of The Witches Of Elfdale
Dennis Wheatley – White And Black Magic
Dennis Wheatley – The Black Art And The Supernatural
Dennis Wheatley – The Witches’ Sabbath
Dennis Wheatley – The Black Mass
Dennis Wheatley – The Devil’s Secret Societies
Dennis Wheatley – Foretelling The Future
Anonymous – The Secret Grimoire Of Turiel

Its worth comparing Satanism & Witches with Peter Haining’s The Necromancers of which this is almost a wholesale rip-off!

Thanks to the much Bob Rothwell of Dennis Wheatly Info for providing the list of contents.

Vere H. Collins – Ghosts and Marvels

Vere H. Collins – Ghosts and Marvels: A Selection Of Uncanny Tales from Daniel Defoe to Algernon Blackwood (H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1924)

M. R. James – Introduction

Daniel Defoe – The Apparition Of Mrs. Veal
Walter Scott – Wandering Willie’s Tale
F. Marryat – The Werewolf
Lord Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters; or, The House and the Brain
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Edgar A. Poe – Ligeia
J. S. Le Fanu – A Strange Event In The Life of Schalken the Painter George Eliot – The Lifted Veil
Mrs. Oliphant – The Open Door
R. L. Stevenson – The Body-snatcher
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
H. G. Wells – The Crystal Egg
Algernon Blackwood – Ancient Sorceries
Barry Pain – The Moon-slave
M. R. James – Casting the Runes

Anthology Of Fear

Anthology Of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories For Winter Nights (Marshall Cavendish, 1988)

Mary Braddon – The Cold Embrace
Mary Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Washington Irving – Guests From Gibbets Island
Washington Irving – The Lady With The Velvet Collar
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
M. R. James – Count Magnus
M. R. James – The Mezzotint
M. R. James – ‘Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad”
J. S. Le Fanu – The Sexton’s Adventure
J. S. Le Fanu – Carmilla
Frederick Marryat – The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains
Edith Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Edith Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Edith Wharton – The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Edith Wharton – Afterward

Peter Haining – The Hell Of Mirrors

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Hell Of Mirrors (Four Square/ Nel, 1965)

Introduction – Peter Haining

Frederick Marryat – The Werewolf
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
Edgar Allan Poe – The Black Cat
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
J. S. Le Fanu – Shalken The Painter
Ambrose Bierce – The Middle Toe Of the Right Foot
Ambrose Bierce – The Damned Thing
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
Guy De Maupassant – Who Knows?
Guy De Maupassant – The Drowned Man
Edogawa Rampo – The Caterpillar
Edogawa Rampo – The Hell Of Mirrors
Henry Slesar – The Knocking In The Castle
Arthur Porges – The Fanatic

Michel Parry – Roots Of Evil

‘Carlos Cassaba’ (Michel Parry) ed. – Roots Of Evil: Beyond The Secret Life Of Plants (Corgi, 1976).

Introduction by Carlos Cassaba

Clark Ashton Smith – The Seed From The Sepulchre
H. G. Wells – The Flowering Of The Strange Orchid
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Rappaccini’s Daughter
Hester Holland – Dorner Cordaianthus
Manly Wade Wellman – Come Into My Parlour
Mary Elizabeth Counselman – The Tree’s Wife
David H. Keller – The Ivy War
John Collier – Green Thoughts
Fritz Leiber – Dr. Adams’ Garden Of Evil
Frederic Brown – Daisies
Margaret St. Clair – The Gardener
Clifford Simak – Green Thumb

It’s official: Flowers hate us, and you’ll never be able to look at a potted plant the same way again.

Parry’s collection is a lot more enjoyable than you might think, this largely due to the sheer bloodthirstiness of the delinquent Triffids that pop up in just about every other story. My personal pick of the bunch are the Clark Ashton Smith story, which is truly creepy and has a moment of awesome horror when the main protagonist suddenly develops a headache. “Green Thoughts” almost certainly inspired Roger Corman’s “The little Shop Of Horrors” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is both horrific and terribly sad, as we learn the lengths a mad scientist will go to to conduct his experiments.