Weird Tales

by Michael Dirda (Editor), J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Harry Campbell (Illustrator)

Michael Dirda chooses the best Weird Tales ever written for this new collection from The Folio Society. Cthulhu and his ilk are summoned to the page by artist Harry Campbell.

Existing somewhere in the chilly territory between ghost stories and tales of horror, weird fiction is the exploration of the truly uncanny; these stories poke holes in the fabric of our everyday reality, revealing glimpses of a strange and unknowable universe. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael Dirda has long held a passion for the genre, and the twelve mind-shattering tales he has selected for this collection contain both genre-defining masterpieces and modern classics.

M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood and Mark Samuels are just some of the writers waiting to induct the reader into a world of creeping horror. In his lively introduction, Dirda warns that the reader "will encounter revenants, demons, monsters and otherworldly entities, as well as black magic, unholy rites, prophetic dreams and accursed books," before explaining why each of these tales is an unmissable example of the "strange and uncanny." Artist Harry Campbell has created seven deeply unsettling illustrations for this edition, including a spectacular double-page spread that will delight fans of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, and a pair of illustrated endpapers that hint at the delicious chills contained within.

OTHERWORLDLY ART BY HARRY CAMPBELL
Spare, elegant and stylised, Harry Campbell’s illustrations nod to the traditional woodcut images of ghost story collections of old, whilst remaining seductively fresh and compelling. In black and green and white, Campbell expertly uses shadows, architecture and eerie flowing shapes to introduce the ambiguity that is the pulsing heart of these stories. In these images, a dark shape follows a man aboard a ship, and light shines off a scaly tentacle as it bursts from a human chest – the laws of nature fall away to reveal the chaos beyond. Playing with the symbolism of the uncanny, the striking binding design features a staring magenta eye and a clutch of unsettling objects. Skulls, keys, spiders and a scurrying black cat warn that this book contains a menagerie of terrors. Featuring both celebrated classics like "The Call of Cthulhu" and lesser-known terrifying treats such as "The Little Room" by Madeline Yale Wynne, Weird Tales is an unmissable celebration of the fiction that reminds us of our insignificance in the face of a vast universe, presented in an edition that could grace any haunted library.

CONTENTS

Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
Sheridan Le Fanu

Amour Dure
Vernon Lee

The Little Room
Madeline Yale Wynne

Novel of the Black Seal
Arthur Machen

The Willows
Algernon Blackwood

Casting the Runes
M. R . James

The Hall Bedroom
Mary E . Wilkins Freeman

The Call of Cthulhu
H. P. Lovecraft

The Daemon Lover
Shirley Jackson

Sticks
Karl Edward Wagner

The Hospice
Robert Aickman

The White Hands
Mark Samuels

Production Details
Three-quarter bound in blocked cloth with a printed and blocked paper front board
Set in Vendetta with Bordonaro as display
360 pages
7 full-page duotone integrated illustrations, including 1 double-page spread, printed in black and green.
Printed endpapers illustrated by the artist
Plain slipcase
Printed in Italy
9 ½˝ x 6 ¼˝

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories

360 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2024

About the author

Michael Dirda (born 1948), a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic. After earning a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University, the joined the Washington Post in 1978.

Two collections of Dirda's literary journalism have been published: Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; ISBN 0-253-33824-7) and Bound to Please (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005; ISBN 0-393-05757-7). He has also written Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2005; ISBN 0-8050-7877-0), Classics for Pleasure (Orlando: Harcourt, 2007; ISBN 0-151-01251-2), critical biographical study On Conan Doyle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011; ISBN 0-691-15135-0), which received a 2012 Edgar Award, and the autobiographical An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003; ISBN 0-393-05756-9).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...

Reviews

[Daulton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the idea of a weird fiction anthology that acknowledges the movement was far more than just Lovecraft. But the prelude does a poor job of explaining its history; parts are cut from certain stories unnecessarily; the art, in my opinion, was too cartoony to set a scary tone; and it’s a bad case of all filler, no killer. Only Call of Cthulhu and The Willows are really must-reads.

[Lawrence Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is only after I have finished a compendium of stories that I mull over why did I manage to finish the book. The answer lies in how eager you are to discover the outcome and with unnatural happenings what is yet to unfold. You do get a few damp squibs but on the whole there was plenty in this book to make you look at an Atlas whether it be to find the willows on the Danube or the terrain in upper New York state or the road network in the West Midlands - in fact when you think about many of these stories they occur in strange and unusual and remote locations. But by far the manipulation of the human mind through various methods makes for startling thoughts.
Not my usual type of reading but it took just over two weeks to come to a closure on what was worth many of these outlandish happenings!
It only gets a three stars because two stories were a bit too long and one was obscure virtually to the end!