Horror Level, Maurice: Tales of Mystery and Horror. v1. 27 Mar 2021

[GrannyGrump]

Tales of Mystery and Horror

By Maurice Level (1875–1926)
Translated from the French by
Alys Eyre Macklin (ca. 1875–1929)



Twenty-six (thirteen doubled!) very short stories of obsession and violence, characterized by gratuitous acts of brutality and surprise endings, which one reviewer calls “slice of death” stories. Because there are some similarities between some stories, these are probably best read in small doses.

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Maurice Level (29 August 1875 – 15 April 1926) was a French writer of fiction and drama who specialized in short stories of the macabre which were printed regularly in the columns of Paris newspapers and sometimes staged by le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, the repertory company in Paris’s Pigalle district devoted to melodramatic productions which emphasized grue and gore. H. P. Lovecraft observed of Level’s fiction in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927): “This type, however, is less a part of the weird tradition than a class peculiar to itself — the so-called conte cruel, in which the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalizations, frustrations and gruesome physical horrors”.

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Originally published 1920. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

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