Blackwood’s tales inhabit a shadowy region between reality and fantasy, life and death, light and shadow. While occasionally dated in their depiction of females and masculinity, his tales of the supernatural and strange are both haunting and transcendent.
(—Kevin Lucia, cemetarydance.com)
Brief summaries of the stories:
Spoiler:
A Mysterious House
Blackwood’s earliest known published fiction.
A straight-forward ghost story, with an unfortunately flat ending.
— Belgravia magazine, Jul 1889
The Story of Karl Ott
Karl is stunned when the love of his life, the English girl who has lived in Niederwald for several years, tells him she is returning to England, and that she is married.
— The Pall Mall Magazine, Oct 1896
Testing His Courage
(non-genre) A fun, if slight, romance about a rich girl and her suitor.
— Pearson’s Magazine, Sep 1904
The Kit Bag
A young law clerk gets more than he bargained for when he borrows a bag from his employer.
— The Pall Mall Magazine, Dec 1908
The Laying of a Red-haired Ghost
Jim’s sister insists her husband’s ghost has returned, and is giving her strict financial instructions.
— The Lady’s Realm, Sep 1909
The Singular Death of Morton
Two men abroad in Switzerland are pursued by a vampire. Blackwood’s only traditional vampire tale.
— The Tramp magazine, Dec 1910
The Strange Experience of the Rev. Phillip Ambleside
While climbing in the Alps, the reverend is guided by uncanny forces to a particular spot.
— The Pall Mall Magazine, Mar 1910
Night Wind
A charming fable-like encounter with the night wind by three children and their uncle Henry the author.
This became a chapter in The Extra Day (1915).
— Country Life, 09 May, 1914
The Memory of Beauty
A convalescent solder suffers from amnesia.
Land & Water, 03 Jan 1918
The Garden of Survival
Short novella of the sentimental variety concerning reincarnation and mysticism, touching again on the “thrill of beauty” as a catalyst.
One of Blackwood’s most personal tales.
— book publ. Macmillan (1918)
Onanonanon
A man who had created an alter ego for his wartime espionage is being haunted by his other self.
— The English Review, Mar 1921
The Fire Body
A woman is convinced she has met the protagonist before on an astral plane in his “Fire Body”.
— The North American Review, Sep 1931
Roman Remains
Queer things were said to go on in the little glen called Goat Valley. Anthony is about to find out.
— Weird Tales magazine, Mar 1948
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One of the foremost British writers of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) wrote stories in which the slow accumulation of telling details produced a foreboding atmosphere of almost unendurable tension. Though he wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, “His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s.”
Blackwood’s literary renown began in 1908 with the publication of a highly successful collection of stories,
John Silence — Physician Extraordinary, featuring a “psychic doctor.” His two best known stories are probably “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”.
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Contents of this ebook, by Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951), were first published 1889 ~ 1948.
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