The Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions

by Oliver Onions

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Ghost Stories, Gothic, Ghosts

635 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

George Oliver Onions (1873–1961), who published under the name Oliver Onions, was an English writer of short stories and novels.

Oliver Onions was born in Bradford in 1873. Although he legally changed his name to George Oliver in 1918, he always published under the name Oliver Onions. Onions originally worked as a commercial artist before turning to writing, and the dust jackets of his earliest works included illustrations painted by Onions himself.

Onions was a prolific writer of short stories and novels and is best remembered today for his ghost stories, the most famous of which is probably ‘The Beckoning Fair One’, originally published in Widdershins (1911). Despite being known today chiefly for his supernatural short fiction, Onions also published more than a dozen novels in a variety of genres, including In Accordance with the Evidence (1912), The Tower of Oblivion (1921), The Hand of Kornelius Voyt (1939), The Story of Ragged Robyn (1945), and Poor Man's Tapestry (1946), which won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize as the best work of fiction published that year.

Onions was apparently a very private individual, and though admired and well-respected in his time, he appears not to have moved in literary circles, and few personal memoirs of him survive. He spent most of his later life in Wales, where he lived with his wife, Berta Ruck (1878-1978), herself a prolific and popular novelist; they had two sons, Arthur (b. 1912) and William (b. 1913). Oliver Onions died in 1961.

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I love classic ghost stories, I think of them as an art form that barely survived the turn of the 19th Century, with the best produced before 1920 and probably written by gaslight. I’m happy to be relieved of my misconceptions by this volume’s contents, written between 1911 and 1935, classic in their substance but illuminated by a psychological viewpoint distinctly modernist In addition to being superbly told.

I’d read some of these stories before – a long time ago in a Dover edition when I was barely clear of college – and “The Beckoning Fair One” several times over the years, a masterpiece of ghostly fiction, but I think I was too young to appreciate the other contents' level of sophistication and arch understatement. Except for “Beckoning,” written in 1911, I favor Onions’ later work as collected here. “Gambier,” about a remote village tyrannized by a clergyman, would make a terrific film with very little modernizing. “The Rope in the Rafters” ties the ghost stories and the emerging genre of horror to the Great War chillingly and effectively. “Resurrection in Bronze” is relentlessly dreadful in the best way. The rest of the book is nearly as powerful.

Production here is the usual superb design by Tartarus Press. Their books are a physical pleasure to read.

Highly recommended.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am loving this so far, even though I've only read one of the stories in it - "The Beckoning Fair One" - which is quite allusive and indirect and at the same time quite plain and scary. Somewhat like M.R. James mixed with Walter De La Mare and maybe some Shirley Jackson, too. This is a huge book, so I plan to return to it in the next years. Enough for several Halloweens!

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first story and then half way through i just kinda gave up. Will try again another time. But I had better books I wanted to be reading.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.66⭐

Credo • (1935) • essay by Oliver Onions ✔
The Beckoning Fair One • (1911) 5⭐
Phantas • (1910) • short story 4⭐
Rooum • (1910) • short story 3⭐
Benlian • (1911) 3.25⭐
The Ascending Dream • (1924) 2.5⭐
The Honey in the Wall • (1924) 2.75⭐
The Rosewood Door • (1929) 3.5⭐
The Accident • (1911) 3.25⭐
The Lost Thyrsus (variant of Io 1911) 2.5⭐
The Painted Face • (1929) 4⭐
The Master of the House • (1929) 3⭐
The Out-Sister • (1935) 3⭐
"John Gladwyn Says ..." • (1928) 3.25⭐
Hic Jacet • (1911) 5⭐
The Real People • (1924) 5⭐
The Cigarette Case • (1910) 4.25⭐
The Rope in the Rafters • (1935) 5⭐
Resurrection in Bronze • (1935) 4⭐
The Woman in the Way • (1924) 3.25⭐

[Jed Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

At their best, Onions' ghost stories are subtle, elusive, and haunting, somewhere between Henry James and Robert Aickman. The high point is clearly the much-anthologized "Beckoning Fair One," but the story's theme of an artist haunted by his own creation is repeated rather too often, and later versions of this motif, like "The Real People," lack that earlier tale's ambiguity and darkness. Pagan themes also proliferate, and in tales like "The Painted Face" and "The Lost Thyrsus" Onions recalls the work of John Buchan and Vernon Lee. This particular edition, bound and printed with the usual Dover quality, is worth seeking out for the care in details: they don't make paperbacks like this anymore!

[Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Beckoning Fair One - 4/5