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Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters ofthe Weird
From the chilling land of Carcosa—an inspiration for the hit TV series, True Detective—to H. P. Lovecraft’s accursed New England hills, this collection features some of the most harrowing creations in the cosmic horror genre and includes such classic works as Arthur Machen's "The White People," Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," and Lovecraft's own weird and hideous "The Colour Out of Space."
This volume also includes: Bram Stoker, “The Squaw”; Ambrose Bierce, “Moxon’s Master” and "The Damned Thing”; R. W. Chambers, “The Repairer of Reputations”; M. P. Shiel, “The House of Sounds”; Henry James, “The Jolly Corner”; Walter de la Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”; Ambrose Bierce’s “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” and a Note on the selection by D. Thin.
"The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space." —H. P. Lovecraft
This volume also includes: Bram Stoker, “The Squaw”; Ambrose Bierce, “Moxon’s Master” and "The Damned Thing”; R. W. Chambers, “The Repairer of Reputations”; M. P. Shiel, “The House of Sounds”; Henry James, “The Jolly Corner”; Walter de la Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”; Ambrose Bierce’s “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” and a Note on the selection by D. Thin.
"The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space." —H. P. Lovecraft
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 67 reviews
June 4, 2019
A dozen classic tales of cosmic horror and the weird collected here from Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, R. W. Chambers, M. P. Shiel, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Henry James, Walter de la Mare and H. P. Lovecraft. I enjoyed every single one, however, in order to share a more specific taste of what a reader will find in this New York Review Books (NYRB) volume, for the purposes of my review, I'll limit my observations to the following three:
THE WHITE PEOPLE by Arthur Machen
Welsh author Arthur Machen looked askance at his surrounding late nineteenth-century society’s infatuation with material progress and thinking all the vast mysteries of the universe can be reduced to science. His tale, The White People, one of the most influential works of horror/supernatural fiction ever written, addresses the consequences of such misguided notions in the personage of Ambrose, a devotee of occult literature, who tells his visitor Cotgrave that modern man is rapidly losing spiritual depth and the capacity to know the meaning of true sin and evil. As part of his teachings, he permits Cotgrave to borrow one of his rare treasures, The Green Book, a thin volume written by a young girl now long since dead. The contents of The Green Book is, in effect, the main body of Machem’s tale. And, let me tell you folks, The Green Book makes for one captivating and exhilarating read, touching on many alluring topics and themes, the following among their number:
Secret Knowledge and Gnostic Wisdom
“I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons.” So begins the young narrator (picture her as you would Alice in the tales of Lewis Carroll) about the secret knowledge she speaks of. And it is a knowing she was told as a very little girl: “the little white faces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me, and I learnt their language and talked to them in it about some great white place where they lived.” We hear echoes of the great Gnostic text, The Hymn of the Pearl, of how we truly belong to a higher, more spiritual realm that we have since long forgotten.
Paganism and Nature Cults
She tells of her adventures with her nurse when she was five, how they went along a path through a wood and how they came to a deep, dark, shady pool. She’s left by her nurse to play with white people who emerged from the wood to dance and play and sing. Further on she sees the white people drink a curious wine and make images and worship them. Arthur Machen was steeped in the pre-Christian pagan religions and the various descriptions here – woods, pools, singing, dancing, playing, drinking wine, creating and worshiping images – are common to all nature cults not only in Europe but throughout the world. When the little girl relays her experiences to nurse, the nurse becomes frightened and tells her she was only dreaming and never to repeat what she has seen. And for good reason! Nineteenth century Wales is still very Christian and all of what she experienced would be labeled as “pagan” by her parents and others and she could be severely punished.
Goddess Worship
The narrator conveys more detail of her encounter, how there was “a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile.” Along with paganism and the natural world, goddess worship played its part in pre-Christian religions and still is a vital presence within many other world religions such as Buddhism and the various Hindu religions from India. Of course, the appearance of a goddess would pose a serious threat to the prevailing male-centered, male-controlled Christian religion. And the narrator being female adds an additional charge of danger to the equation since females, even little girls, possess such a direct connection to intuition, emotions, feelings and the earth.
Jungian Archetypes
As part of her adventures, the narrator comes upon “the big round mound.” The University of Richmond has an entire project dedicated to prehistoric round mounds. And round mounds have so much affinity with mandalas thus they can be included in an analysis of the mandala archetype as developed by psychologist Carl Jung. As Jung has written, “The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the Self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man.” As we follow our young guide through her Green Book, we can read between the lines to detect how rich the connections Arthur Machen has made of his narrator’s account to the world of myth, spirit and the quest for psychic wholeness.
Shamanism
Again and again our little girl writes of her fantastic encounters, as when she “crept up a tunnel under a tree” and “the ground rose up in front of me, tall and steep as a wall, and there was nothing but the green wall and the sky.” This is the language from the world of the shaman. Anthropologist Michael Harner has engaged in years of research of tribal cultures and writes extensively on the “shamanic state of consciousness” where the shaman will enter either the lower world or the higher world to gain knowledge and power so as to benefit the health and well-being of the tribe. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how in tribal cultures our narrator would quickly be initiated as one of its shamans.
“I dream in fire but work in clay.”
― Arthur Machen (1863–1947)
THE DAMNED THING by Ambrose Bierce
In his book The Spooky Art, Norman Mailer addresses the presence and power of evil, how it can take various forms to exert a destructive influence in our material world: “If a Creator exists in company with an opposite Presence (to be called Satan, for short), there is also the most lively possibility of a variety of major and minor angels, devils and demons, good spirits and evil, working away more or less invisibly in our lives.”
Well, with this Ambrose Bierce tale, we are given an instance of such a destructive force. However, this force makes itself known by penetrating, on some level, into the visible world. It is this “on some level,” the shadowy, not quite within the spectrum of human vision and human hearing, that makes the tale eerie in the extreme - the force takes on form, sort of, outside our normal human senses, but it is there – it moves, it screams, it can become violent.
The dark beauty of Ambrose Bierce’s telling is all in the atmosphere and the timing – there are four short chapters: Chapter I begins: “By THE light of a tallow candle, which had been placed on one end of a rough table, a man was reading something written in a book. It was an old account book, greatly worn; and the writing was not, apparently, very legible, for the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light upon it. The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures; for besides the reader, eight other men were present. Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent and motionless, and, the room being small, not very far from the table. By extending an arm any one of them could have touched the eighth man, who lay on the table, face upward, partly covered by a sheet, his arms at his sides. He was dead.”
Chapter II features the entrance of a young short story writer and journalist by the name of William Harker who was near Hugh Morgan when Morgan was mauled by a mysterious force. Harker reads out loud his account of the happening. Harker departs the gathering in Chapter III but before he leaves he asks the man with the book he recognizes as Morgan’s diary if he can see it. "The book will cut no figure in this matter," replied the official, slipping it into his coat pocket; "all the entries in it were made before the writer's death." Lastly, Chapter IV is the contents of Morgan’s diary – horrifying, ghastly, dreadful, creepy, weird, and last but not least, sinister and spine-chilling. A tale not to be missed.
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
-Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
SEATON'S AUNT by Walter de la Mare
This Walter de la Mare is one of the most chilling tales I’ve ever read. One prime reason is the presence of the aunt who could very well be in league with the devil or other diabolical forces or simply has a keen paranormal ability to read the inner thoughts of those around her. The idea that a being, even if that being is God let alone an old woman, can read our thoughts in such a way that strips us of our privacy, that is a gross invasion of privacy, is most unsettling and disturbing. The Gothic atmosphere created and the flawless timing of the narrator’s telling (the first part as a visiting schoolboy; the second part as a young adult) makes for one scary read. Walter de la Mare’s writing here is to too subtle and nuanced to call this a ghost story, but its close.
Here is a quote from the tale when, along with Seaton, his fellow schoolmate, the narrator approaches the aunt’s house: “She was standing at an upper window which opened wide on a hinge, and at first sight she looked an excessively tall and overwhelming figure. This, however, was mainly because the window reached all but to the floor of her bedroom. She was in reality rather an undersized woman, in spite of her long face and big head. She must have stood, I think, unusually still, with eyes fixed on us, though this impression may be due to Seaton's sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious and subdued air that had fallen on him at sight of her. I know that without the least reason in the world I felt a kind of guiltiness, as if I had been 'caught'. There was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on her black silk dress, and even from the ground I could see the immense coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held fingering the small jet buttons of her bodice. She watched our united advance without stirring, until, imperceptibly, her eyes raised and lost themselves in the distance, so that it was out of an assumed reverie that she appeared suddenly to awaken to our presence beneath her when we drew close to the house.” Again, not a tale to be missed.
“An hour's terror is better than a lifetime of timidity.”
― Walter de la Mare (1876-1953)
June 12, 2019
Bad luck for me, it turns out I'd already read a lot of the stories here, and also, disappointingly, there is not a lot of obvious connection to mysterious Carcosa, which is what I was looking for. But, a very good collection, which I recommend if you haven't read many of the following:
Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations" (this is one of the stories from The King in Yellow
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds" (boring)
Arthur Machen, "The White People" Excellent!
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows" (I've read this twice before but probably ought to check out this version because I liked it much better on rereading.)
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner" (OMG, so boring. I think I fell asleep before figuring out what the supernatural part was.)
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt" (Subdued creepiness at its most stifling)
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space" is one of the more disturbing and sad Lovecraft stories.
The book ends with an essay on Lovecraft's essay on horror, which is kind of amusing since Lovecraft went out of his way to mention not liking James' attempts at horror.
I especially enjoyed The White People, which I had otherwise not found in print.
Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations" (this is one of the stories from The King in Yellow
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds" (boring)
Arthur Machen, "The White People" Excellent!
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows" (I've read this twice before but probably ought to check out this version because I liked it much better on rereading.)
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner" (OMG, so boring. I think I fell asleep before figuring out what the supernatural part was.)
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt" (Subdued creepiness at its most stifling)
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space" is one of the more disturbing and sad Lovecraft stories.
The book ends with an essay on Lovecraft's essay on horror, which is kind of amusing since Lovecraft went out of his way to mention not liking James' attempts at horror.
I especially enjoyed The White People, which I had otherwise not found in print.
December 8, 2021
There must be some eldritch horror unfit for human eyes to see on page 350 because they replaced it with an extra copy of page 352. But that was in the end-notes; all the stories are complete.
Apart from that, this is a solid collection of early "cosmic horror" or "weird" stories. The "Repairer of Reputations" by Chambers remains my favorite, though "The Willows" is certainly also a classic.
I skipped the story by Henry James. I am glad they didn't choose the over-done "Turn of the Screw", but I just don't feel in the mood for any James.
Apart from that, this is a solid collection of early "cosmic horror" or "weird" stories. The "Repairer of Reputations" by Chambers remains my favorite, though "The Willows" is certainly also a classic.
I skipped the story by Henry James. I am glad they didn't choose the over-done "Turn of the Screw", but I just don't feel in the mood for any James.
October 18, 2015
This book is an odd duck: rather than a primer on or survey of weird fiction, this collection seeks to be more a study of the contemporaries and progenitors of Lovecraft's style. So you'd think they'd be assuming that you've read Lovecraft's stuff, but at the very end(?) it includes Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space". This might well be for comparison or completeness, but the inclusion almost compulsory, like you CAN'T do any collection of weird fiction without including at least some Lovecraft.
That said, the collection itself is revelatory and even pretty enjoyable for the most part. Viewing the collection through the lens of Lovecraft, it takes on an almost combinatorial feel—mixing and matching, excluding and including the various elements that we think of when we survey Lovecraft's work. Shiel's "The House of Sounds" takes the theme of sensory over-stimulations leading to madness, and outdoes "The Fall of the House of Usher" in turn. Machen's "The White People" does the same sort of unworldly lore and descent into hidden codes and ritual, but in a bit different context than usual. And most refreshingly, the collection shows that many of the key elements of weird fiction are not necessarily tied to a racist world-view as much as they disgustingly are in some of Lovecraft's.
Of course, some of the stories fall flat or are boring reads; the genre isn't really known for tidy writing or plotting in general, and seeing so many of these in one place negates the novelty that usually carries some of the weight. But many of the stuff is better than Lovecraft's efforts, and certainly deserves some of the attention that's almost singularly accorded to his work. Plus the NYRB has a rad Charles Burns cover that's refreshingly loud compared to their usual tone.
That said, the collection itself is revelatory and even pretty enjoyable for the most part. Viewing the collection through the lens of Lovecraft, it takes on an almost combinatorial feel—mixing and matching, excluding and including the various elements that we think of when we survey Lovecraft's work. Shiel's "The House of Sounds" takes the theme of sensory over-stimulations leading to madness, and outdoes "The Fall of the House of Usher" in turn. Machen's "The White People" does the same sort of unworldly lore and descent into hidden codes and ritual, but in a bit different context than usual. And most refreshingly, the collection shows that many of the key elements of weird fiction are not necessarily tied to a racist world-view as much as they disgustingly are in some of Lovecraft's.
Of course, some of the stories fall flat or are boring reads; the genre isn't really known for tidy writing or plotting in general, and seeing so many of these in one place negates the novelty that usually carries some of the weight. But many of the stuff is better than Lovecraft's efforts, and certainly deserves some of the attention that's almost singularly accorded to his work. Plus the NYRB has a rad Charles Burns cover that's refreshingly loud compared to their usual tone.
September 14, 2022
can someone please, for the love of all that is unholy and impure, point me towards a cosmic horror tale that wasn't written by a white dude in a mind-numbingly tedious language?
April 4, 2016
The Charles Burns cover is what initially brought this to my attention. This is a fine collection of horror stories from past masters of the form. It's the usual mixed bag, with perhaps a bit more eclecticism than one normally sees from such books. Standouts for me include Bram Stoker's fine (and darkly humorous) "The Squaw" and Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows"--a bit slow to begin, but worth sticking with as there are some beautifully chilling moments and a fine conclusion. I've read Poe's "M.S. Found In A Bottle", Bierce's "The Damned Thing", and Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" before, though it's always a pleasure to reread them. My least favorite was probably Henry James' "The Jolly Corner," which I found dreadfully dull. I know James by reputation, and it's possible that I was too impatient, too much of a Philistine, or just simply in the wrong frame of mind to appreciate it. All in all, this is a fun book, well worth reading for fans of the genre.
April 17, 2017
A great selection for any fans of Lovecraft & other cosmic/fantastic horror - and a great way to get exposed to other great authors working within the discipline. Some stories I had read before, and all were very enjoyable. I've taken the time to give them each an individual rating below:
Poe - M.S Found in a Bottle (3/5)
A mysterious account of a shipwrecked sailor who finds rescue stowed away on a damned ship during an otherworldly storm.
Bram Stoker - The Squaw (3/5)
A bit of a different feel from much of the other content, this one tells of an American tourist who accidentally kills a kitten & is ruthlessly pursued by its bloodstained mother, which avenges its slain offspring.
Ambrose Bierce - Moxon's Master (3/5)
A friend's ruminations on whether or not a machine "thinks" preface the discovery that he has constructed a mechanical chess-adversary, who turns out to be an extraordinarily bad loser.
Bierce - The Damned Thing (4/5)
A coroner's inquest features the interview of a witness who says that he watched the deceased being torn apart by an invisible being. Witty, immersive, and interesting pseudo-scientific explanations.
Bierce - An Inhabitant of Carcosa (2/5)
A very short & trippy account of the fevered delirium (& apparent death) of the protagonist as he explores the great, destroyed city of Carcosa.
R.W Chambers - The Repairer of Reputations (3/5)
One that I had read before, in The King in Yellow, a deluded man indulges in a conspiracy with a neighbour to rule the world as he hallucinates a priceless relic & forbids his cousin from dating... A very interesting approach to revealing a narrator's insanity.
M.P Shiel - The House of Sounds (3/5)
A school chum invites the narrator to his ancestral home haunted by family spirits, complete with a subterranean morgue featuring a complex doomsday clock which heralds the end of their lineage.
Arthur Machen - The White People (5/5)
A very cool account of a young girl who comes to gradually understand & explore the esoteric truths revealed to her by her nurse. After learning & intuiting phrases & rituals with startling powers, her explorations themselves become a spell, unlocking special places in the great outdoors.
Algernon Blackwood - The Willows (5/5)
Two buddies are stranded on an island in the midst of a canoeing trip, where gradually a mysterious unease escalates to cosmic terror caused by something dwelling behind the "thin veil between worlds." Fantastic atmosphere and noteworthy approach to cosmic terrors.
Henry James - The Jolly Corner (4/5)
Recently moved back to his childhood neighbourhood in New York, a man becomes obsessed by what he might have become had he stayed. He stalks his alternate spirit in the dark hallways of his giant house by night. Very cool in concept and execution.
Walter de la Mare - Seaton's Aunt (4/5)
The awkward boy at school invites our narrator to stay at his creepy aunt's home, where he reveals she's "in league with the devil." Very cool concept and execution, but I was disappointed with the lack of meaningful resolution or final understanding.
H.P Lovecraft - The Colour out of Space (5/5)
Another I'd read previously: a strange meteor strikes a New England farm, poisoning the countryside with a strange colour outside the earthly spectrum, which infects & destroys all organic matter. A wonderfully unique approach to cosmic terror, & full of wonderful descriptions of terrible phenomena.
Poe - M.S Found in a Bottle (3/5)
A mysterious account of a shipwrecked sailor who finds rescue stowed away on a damned ship during an otherworldly storm.
Bram Stoker - The Squaw (3/5)
A bit of a different feel from much of the other content, this one tells of an American tourist who accidentally kills a kitten & is ruthlessly pursued by its bloodstained mother, which avenges its slain offspring.
Ambrose Bierce - Moxon's Master (3/5)
A friend's ruminations on whether or not a machine "thinks" preface the discovery that he has constructed a mechanical chess-adversary, who turns out to be an extraordinarily bad loser.
Bierce - The Damned Thing (4/5)
A coroner's inquest features the interview of a witness who says that he watched the deceased being torn apart by an invisible being. Witty, immersive, and interesting pseudo-scientific explanations.
Bierce - An Inhabitant of Carcosa (2/5)
A very short & trippy account of the fevered delirium (& apparent death) of the protagonist as he explores the great, destroyed city of Carcosa.
R.W Chambers - The Repairer of Reputations (3/5)
One that I had read before, in The King in Yellow, a deluded man indulges in a conspiracy with a neighbour to rule the world as he hallucinates a priceless relic & forbids his cousin from dating... A very interesting approach to revealing a narrator's insanity.
M.P Shiel - The House of Sounds (3/5)
A school chum invites the narrator to his ancestral home haunted by family spirits, complete with a subterranean morgue featuring a complex doomsday clock which heralds the end of their lineage.
Arthur Machen - The White People (5/5)
A very cool account of a young girl who comes to gradually understand & explore the esoteric truths revealed to her by her nurse. After learning & intuiting phrases & rituals with startling powers, her explorations themselves become a spell, unlocking special places in the great outdoors.
Algernon Blackwood - The Willows (5/5)
Two buddies are stranded on an island in the midst of a canoeing trip, where gradually a mysterious unease escalates to cosmic terror caused by something dwelling behind the "thin veil between worlds." Fantastic atmosphere and noteworthy approach to cosmic terrors.
Henry James - The Jolly Corner (4/5)
Recently moved back to his childhood neighbourhood in New York, a man becomes obsessed by what he might have become had he stayed. He stalks his alternate spirit in the dark hallways of his giant house by night. Very cool in concept and execution.
Walter de la Mare - Seaton's Aunt (4/5)
The awkward boy at school invites our narrator to stay at his creepy aunt's home, where he reveals she's "in league with the devil." Very cool concept and execution, but I was disappointed with the lack of meaningful resolution or final understanding.
H.P Lovecraft - The Colour out of Space (5/5)
Another I'd read previously: a strange meteor strikes a New England farm, poisoning the countryside with a strange colour outside the earthly spectrum, which infects & destroys all organic matter. A wonderfully unique approach to cosmic terror, & full of wonderful descriptions of terrible phenomena.
December 5, 2021
It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
March 25, 2023
I'm not sure this is a great introduction to cosmic horror for people. While it contains the earliest vestiges of the genre, these aren't the best examples of what authors have done with it. The Henry James story in particular is god-awful.
Standouts include:
R.W. Chambers, The Repairer of Reputations (a lot of the themes from Chambers' work were used for True Detective Season 1)
Algernon Blackwood, The Willows
Walter de la Mare, Seaton's Aunt
HP Lovecraft, The Color Out of Space (possibly Lovecraft's best story - tightly written, filled with dread, truly original, and with only one aside about Polish people).
Overall, I'd give this collection a 3-3.5. it might be useful for understanding the origins of the genre, but 20-21st century authors have greatly improved on the form and warrant inclusion in a primer.
Standouts include:
R.W. Chambers, The Repairer of Reputations (a lot of the themes from Chambers' work were used for True Detective Season 1)
Algernon Blackwood, The Willows
Walter de la Mare, Seaton's Aunt
HP Lovecraft, The Color Out of Space (possibly Lovecraft's best story - tightly written, filled with dread, truly original, and with only one aside about Polish people).
Overall, I'd give this collection a 3-3.5. it might be useful for understanding the origins of the genre, but 20-21st century authors have greatly improved on the form and warrant inclusion in a primer.
November 12, 2022
Took me forever to get through this on account of a few ye olde timey clunkers (who cares about ghost ships, why were authors in the late 19th century obsessed with ghost ships?) but I really did enjoy a lot of stories in here. It’s all Lovecraft-adjacent authors (and one Lovecraft story at the end) so you know the vibe: men losing their minds after bearing witness to horrors beyond their comprehension, laws of reality warping, grim endings without resolutions or answers, the whole deal. The White People, The Willows, Seaton’s Aunt, all the Ambrose Bierce stories… so good!! This kind of 1880s-1930 weird horror fiction always scratches an itch I can’t get through any other kind of book.
May 31, 2021
I hesitate to give it a 4, but I don’t think I can give half stars and the highlight stories far outweigh the duds so I’ll round up instead of down. A good intro to cosmic horror and stories of the weird.
September 16, 2024
This anthology of cosmic horror took me almost a year to read (I put it down for a long time) but worth sticking through! An incredible selection of some truly bizarre and otherworldly tales.
My favorites were Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, and Henry James. Some freaks.
My favorites were Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, and Henry James. Some freaks.
October 10, 2024
A lovely collection of spooky tales from the classic of horror. Some are definitely more scary than others but I think that more down too personal taste and what I find scary rather than the quality of writing
December 30, 2021
Not quite as “cosmic” as I was hoping but still a nice collection of creepy reads.
November 26, 2022
Like most anthologys, some stories were better than others. Over all, this collection was kind of weak, almost boring. I was expecting something more... idk... weird? Macabe? i felt let down.
November 6, 2025
3 really exceptional stories in this is a great hit rate as far as I'm concerned: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, The Repairer of Reputations by RW Chambers, and Seaton's Aunt by Walter de la Mare. Oh hell yeah!
No duds, I think -- though several are tougher reads, like the Shiel, James, and Machen stories. All 3 of those are still compelling and genuinely unique in their prose styles, though. Shiel and Machen in particular are very weird, distinct voices, to their credit.
An extremely white male collection, though -- could have been interesting to get some other voices in this, but I'm not the expert on the genre.
Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle":
Apparently the story that launched Poe's career, a favorite of Conrad's, and a massive influence on Moby Dick -- a good start to the anthology! Naval setting -- our protagonist is a passenger on a cargo ship that encounters a cosmic weather event in the Java Sea that sends them in a sort of phantom plane that culminates in an Antarctic whirlpool.
Stoker, "The Squaw":
Pretty graphic animal violence, so strong trigger warning -- but also honestly really liked. Set in Nuremberg with a vengeful black mother cat, and iron maiden, and three really shitty people who get what's coming to them. The worst of them, Hutcheson, recalls an Apache woman who for three years hunts the American soldier who killed her child before catching and torturing him until Hutcheson found and killed her. Not sure it's a brilliant story, but legitimately memorable in some of its violence and symbols.
Bierce, "Moxon's Master":
The first of 3 Bierces -- a sort of Frankenstein/Monster dynamic between an inventor and his creation that culminates in a fatal game of chess.
Bierce, "The Damned Thing":
A creature whose victim believes exists on a light spectrum not visible to the human eye. The story's short, mostly told through recollections and notes found during an inquest into the victim's death.
Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa":
The story that introduced Carcosa and influenced a ton of weird fiction offshoots. Short and mysterious -- you don't learn shit about Carcosa, other than that our protagonist is(/was) a citizen of it, and that he is evidently in a premonitory-like state (or perhaps some sort of purgatory) where he discovers his own grave in the ruins of the now-ancient Carcosa. Very short, definitely weird
Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations":
This rocked -- highlight of the collection so far. One of the stories from The King in Yellow anthology that I've always meant to read -- this may expedite that because I really loved this. A very unstable and unreliable narrator named Castaigne who reads The King in Yellow during his convalescence from head trauma he suffered in a horse-riding incident -- the play leads him to believe that he's the uncrowned Last King chosen by the Yellow King, 'King among kings.' Or, rather, that his cousin is, which necessitates that he must depose him and not allow him to marry and have an heir. Castaigne is in league with a strange man named Wilde who seems to pull strings throughout high society and who also owns a feral cat who frequently tries to kill him. Also some weird retro-future US politics going on -- highly isolationist, anti-immigration, legalized euthanasia. I can't imagine what normal people thought of this shit in 1895
Shiel, "House of Sounds"
Veryyy archaic and a slog to read for the most part, but admittedly did start to get into it by the end -- very feverish and insanely written in a way that's not really enjoyable but is legitimately eerie. Some really strange turns of phrase
". . . like the streaming hair of some ranting fakir stung reeling by the tarantulas of distraction"
". . . a palm seemed to skin back from my brain the films and media of delusion"
Machen, "The White People"
Also a little bit of slog -- essentially a young girl's ramblings (20 page paragraph included) as she's drawn in and unknowingly inundating herself into an ancient, macabre cult/ritual/tradition. A weird reading experience -- really difficult to get into and then weirdly rapturous once you do let yourself be drawn in
Blackwood, "The Willows"
This one's NOT a slog -- this and the Chambers story are easily the standouts of this collection for me. A sort of Heart of Darkness feel as the two outdoorsmen descend the Danube into a stretch of antediluvian marshy wasteland and are subsequently trapped on an island soon to be consumed by the current and rising waterline -- and by extremely ominous and rampant willows. Love the personification of the river as they move down it -- maturing, growing into its own. The dynamic between the narrator and the Swede is also one of the best in this book -- not too many great relationships in these stories, so this one really stands out. They foil each other really well -- kind of a bromance, even, which I didn't expect. Real and sensible responses, which only heightens the tension and terror.
James, "The Jolly Corner"
Woah, sort of back to slog -- first I've read of James, and I'll admit he was tough to get into. Bro uses a lottt of clauses -- is frequently throwing in em dashes and colons and semi colons and exclamations/quotes and parentheses and other random punctuation and ways to avoid the dreaded period. A story about a man haunted by the version of himself he could have been -- he is essentially the ghost of the Jolly Corner who haunts the specter of his former self, which confronts him at the end. Sort of Dorian Grayish, with an odd romance element to it in the form of Miss Staverton, who also seems to be acquianted with his specter.
de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
I'm not sure I'd put this quite on the level of the Chambers and Blackwood stories, but this is another exceptional one from a more obscure name. Whereas those two others are clearly cosmic horror, this one straddles the line a bit more -- there's a suggestion of something more sinister and unknowable, as Seaton suggests and pleads with Withers to believe and corroborate, but it's never explicitly said. The Aunt could just as simply be an abusive sociopath. (Though her appearance, lack of aging, gargantuan appetite, and insomnia do seem to suggest something more macabre) This is terrific, great lesser known selection -- apparently de la Mare is a favorite of many influential weird fiction writers, but was never a big name among non-writers in the scene.
"I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse lids."
Lovecraft, "The Colour out of Space"
A very strong one to end with -- only my second Lovecraft piece after having read At the Mountains of Madness years ago, which I liked but didn't love (and which I thought unraveled in the latter half after an excellent first). A meteor that seems to have carried some sort of entity that poisons a tract of land and the minds of a rural family, leaving the villagers and researchers at nearby Miskatonic University in Arkham dumbfounded and mortified. This is probably a very good Lovecraft to start with -- very much a model cosmic horror story.
No duds, I think -- though several are tougher reads, like the Shiel, James, and Machen stories. All 3 of those are still compelling and genuinely unique in their prose styles, though. Shiel and Machen in particular are very weird, distinct voices, to their credit.
An extremely white male collection, though -- could have been interesting to get some other voices in this, but I'm not the expert on the genre.
Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle":
Apparently the story that launched Poe's career, a favorite of Conrad's, and a massive influence on Moby Dick -- a good start to the anthology! Naval setting -- our protagonist is a passenger on a cargo ship that encounters a cosmic weather event in the Java Sea that sends them in a sort of phantom plane that culminates in an Antarctic whirlpool.
Stoker, "The Squaw":
Pretty graphic animal violence, so strong trigger warning -- but also honestly really liked. Set in Nuremberg with a vengeful black mother cat, and iron maiden, and three really shitty people who get what's coming to them. The worst of them, Hutcheson, recalls an Apache woman who for three years hunts the American soldier who killed her child before catching and torturing him until Hutcheson found and killed her. Not sure it's a brilliant story, but legitimately memorable in some of its violence and symbols.
Bierce, "Moxon's Master":
The first of 3 Bierces -- a sort of Frankenstein/Monster dynamic between an inventor and his creation that culminates in a fatal game of chess.
Bierce, "The Damned Thing":
A creature whose victim believes exists on a light spectrum not visible to the human eye. The story's short, mostly told through recollections and notes found during an inquest into the victim's death.
Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa":
The story that introduced Carcosa and influenced a ton of weird fiction offshoots. Short and mysterious -- you don't learn shit about Carcosa, other than that our protagonist is(/was) a citizen of it, and that he is evidently in a premonitory-like state (or perhaps some sort of purgatory) where he discovers his own grave in the ruins of the now-ancient Carcosa. Very short, definitely weird
Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations":
This rocked -- highlight of the collection so far. One of the stories from The King in Yellow anthology that I've always meant to read -- this may expedite that because I really loved this. A very unstable and unreliable narrator named Castaigne who reads The King in Yellow during his convalescence from head trauma he suffered in a horse-riding incident -- the play leads him to believe that he's the uncrowned Last King chosen by the Yellow King, 'King among kings.' Or, rather, that his cousin is, which necessitates that he must depose him and not allow him to marry and have an heir. Castaigne is in league with a strange man named Wilde who seems to pull strings throughout high society and who also owns a feral cat who frequently tries to kill him. Also some weird retro-future US politics going on -- highly isolationist, anti-immigration, legalized euthanasia. I can't imagine what normal people thought of this shit in 1895
Shiel, "House of Sounds"
Veryyy archaic and a slog to read for the most part, but admittedly did start to get into it by the end -- very feverish and insanely written in a way that's not really enjoyable but is legitimately eerie. Some really strange turns of phrase
". . . like the streaming hair of some ranting fakir stung reeling by the tarantulas of distraction"
". . . a palm seemed to skin back from my brain the films and media of delusion"
Machen, "The White People"
Also a little bit of slog -- essentially a young girl's ramblings (20 page paragraph included) as she's drawn in and unknowingly inundating herself into an ancient, macabre cult/ritual/tradition. A weird reading experience -- really difficult to get into and then weirdly rapturous once you do let yourself be drawn in
Blackwood, "The Willows"
This one's NOT a slog -- this and the Chambers story are easily the standouts of this collection for me. A sort of Heart of Darkness feel as the two outdoorsmen descend the Danube into a stretch of antediluvian marshy wasteland and are subsequently trapped on an island soon to be consumed by the current and rising waterline -- and by extremely ominous and rampant willows. Love the personification of the river as they move down it -- maturing, growing into its own. The dynamic between the narrator and the Swede is also one of the best in this book -- not too many great relationships in these stories, so this one really stands out. They foil each other really well -- kind of a bromance, even, which I didn't expect. Real and sensible responses, which only heightens the tension and terror.
James, "The Jolly Corner"
Woah, sort of back to slog -- first I've read of James, and I'll admit he was tough to get into. Bro uses a lottt of clauses -- is frequently throwing in em dashes and colons and semi colons and exclamations/quotes and parentheses and other random punctuation and ways to avoid the dreaded period. A story about a man haunted by the version of himself he could have been -- he is essentially the ghost of the Jolly Corner who haunts the specter of his former self, which confronts him at the end. Sort of Dorian Grayish, with an odd romance element to it in the form of Miss Staverton, who also seems to be acquianted with his specter.
de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
I'm not sure I'd put this quite on the level of the Chambers and Blackwood stories, but this is another exceptional one from a more obscure name. Whereas those two others are clearly cosmic horror, this one straddles the line a bit more -- there's a suggestion of something more sinister and unknowable, as Seaton suggests and pleads with Withers to believe and corroborate, but it's never explicitly said. The Aunt could just as simply be an abusive sociopath. (Though her appearance, lack of aging, gargantuan appetite, and insomnia do seem to suggest something more macabre) This is terrific, great lesser known selection -- apparently de la Mare is a favorite of many influential weird fiction writers, but was never a big name among non-writers in the scene.
"I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse lids."
Lovecraft, "The Colour out of Space"
A very strong one to end with -- only my second Lovecraft piece after having read At the Mountains of Madness years ago, which I liked but didn't love (and which I thought unraveled in the latter half after an excellent first). A meteor that seems to have carried some sort of entity that poisons a tract of land and the minds of a rural family, leaving the villagers and researchers at nearby Miskatonic University in Arkham dumbfounded and mortified. This is probably a very good Lovecraft to start with -- very much a model cosmic horror story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 4, 2018
*No Spoilers*
I'll have to admit, as a millennial, it's a bit of an adjustment to adapt to the writing styles of authors from as far as the late 1800s, but I was already a fan of H.P Lovecraft before going in, so I stuck through, and while some of the tales I kind of shrugged at, some of these reads were quite worth it.
The biggest theme of this book is cosmic horror, which I didn't have defined going in. Now, I understand: it's a type of dread. You don't know exactly what's happening, but something is wrong, and then something bad happens, and you don't exactly how it happened, but you know whatever caused it transcends human understanding. You start to grasp just enough of it, but you're still clouded by the dangerous unknown.
Certain stories did this well: An Inhabitant of Carcosa, The Willows, the House of Sounds, the Colour out of Space. Arguably, the most memorable of the tales of the book. If you just want the best reads and the best definition of "cosmic horror", read those four.
The White People would have been a lot better had I not been so turned off by the prose.
Other stories were enjoyable, but didn't really take the cosmic horror route: The Repairer of Reputations, the Damned Thing, The Squaw, and Moxon's Master were all good, if not predictable, and much less "cosmic".
Some of these stories were rather dull or entertaining enough, but not exciting enough in the end to be worth the read. I`d consider Seaton's Aunt and the Jolly Corner to be among the dullest of tales, and I don't think Poe's MS Found in a Bottle tale was entertaining enough to kick off the collection with.
The Colour out of Space is the final story in the collection, and after reading the other tales, it's clear where Lovecraft got much of his influence. As much as I liked the others listed, this was the only story that made me run over to a friend and rant about how good it was. That's the only 5-star story in the collection.
I'll have to admit, as a millennial, it's a bit of an adjustment to adapt to the writing styles of authors from as far as the late 1800s, but I was already a fan of H.P Lovecraft before going in, so I stuck through, and while some of the tales I kind of shrugged at, some of these reads were quite worth it.
The biggest theme of this book is cosmic horror, which I didn't have defined going in. Now, I understand: it's a type of dread. You don't know exactly what's happening, but something is wrong, and then something bad happens, and you don't exactly how it happened, but you know whatever caused it transcends human understanding. You start to grasp just enough of it, but you're still clouded by the dangerous unknown.
Certain stories did this well: An Inhabitant of Carcosa, The Willows, the House of Sounds, the Colour out of Space. Arguably, the most memorable of the tales of the book. If you just want the best reads and the best definition of "cosmic horror", read those four.
The White People would have been a lot better had I not been so turned off by the prose.
Other stories were enjoyable, but didn't really take the cosmic horror route: The Repairer of Reputations, the Damned Thing, The Squaw, and Moxon's Master were all good, if not predictable, and much less "cosmic".
Some of these stories were rather dull or entertaining enough, but not exciting enough in the end to be worth the read. I`d consider Seaton's Aunt and the Jolly Corner to be among the dullest of tales, and I don't think Poe's MS Found in a Bottle tale was entertaining enough to kick off the collection with.
The Colour out of Space is the final story in the collection, and after reading the other tales, it's clear where Lovecraft got much of his influence. As much as I liked the others listed, this was the only story that made me run over to a friend and rant about how good it was. That's the only 5-star story in the collection.
March 18, 2016
Editor D. Thin has assembled a mostly-excellent anthology of classic horror stories, most of the cosmic variety, and it's been wrapped in an arresting cover by underground comix artist Charles Burns. Thin states in his afterword--which should properly have been an introduction with some bona fides provided for the editor himself--that he was mainly guided in his selection by Lovecraft's famous essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature." As a result, we get some much-reprinted and rightly-lauded material including personal favorites like "The White People" by Arthur Machen and "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood. His selection of Bierce stories contains the oddity "Moxon's Master," a sort of science-fictional automaton tale that owes more to Hoffmann than Lovecraft, alongside the more common "The Damned Thing" and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa." Thin also interestingly chooses Chambers' "The Repairer of Reputations" from The King in Yellow rather than "The Yellow Sign" or "The Demoiselle D'Ys."
When the editor deviates from Lovecraft's recommendations, the book loses points. First is in the selection of the utterly predictable and histrionically told "The Squaw" by Bram Stoker. It's a dreadful bit of writing that belongs in a selection of "sensation" stories of the type mocked by Poe long before its original publication. The other major misstep is the inclusion of Henry James' "The Jolly Corner." This story comes from James' later phase, and it has all the hallmarks of that period's interminable recursiveness, stuttering self-referentiality, and tedious fastidiousness.
Overall a worthwhile assemblage of tales, and a good primer of the horror genre from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
When the editor deviates from Lovecraft's recommendations, the book loses points. First is in the selection of the utterly predictable and histrionically told "The Squaw" by Bram Stoker. It's a dreadful bit of writing that belongs in a selection of "sensation" stories of the type mocked by Poe long before its original publication. The other major misstep is the inclusion of Henry James' "The Jolly Corner." This story comes from James' later phase, and it has all the hallmarks of that period's interminable recursiveness, stuttering self-referentiality, and tedious fastidiousness.
Overall a worthwhile assemblage of tales, and a good primer of the horror genre from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
November 12, 2018
I read the first part of this fine anthology in my last year's pre-Halloween reading and finished it this year. I was apprehensive about the last story, Lovecraft's "Colour Out of Space"; it had scared the sleep out of me when I first read it at the age of 12 and I was worried that it would have that kind of effect on me now, or that I would find that it was not that good. No worries, it is a fine piece of cosmic horror and my favorite work by Lovecraft. It has no mention of Cthulhu and only uses the word "eldritch" once, and that not followed by "horror."
December 8, 2015
My review is part of a blog posting on Worlds Without End titled The Universe Wants You Dead: The Return of Cosmic Horror.
http://blog.worldswithoutend.com/2015...
http://blog.worldswithoutend.com/2015...
September 19, 2025
Fun little collection of some spooky stories! Not much congruency in the selection but still a good read. Short reviews for each story:
MS. Found in a Bottle- Edgar Allan Poe
Not as good as some of Poe’s more known work, namely The Raven (I LOVE The Raven) but still spooky. The inherent spookiness in the vastness of the sea. There is something scary about finding someone in the midst of nothing.
The Squaw- Bram Stoker
Not really too spooky. Jarring and a little graphic but it’s all too predictable.
Moxon’s Master- Ambrose Bierce
Not all that remarkable.
The Damned Thing- Ambrose Bierce
Really cool. Don’t care for the framing device but the meat of the story is really fascinating. Evil invisible something and it kills a guy invisibly. Rules.
Inhabitant of Carcosa- Ambrose Bierce
I LOVE the image of the caveman walking through the ruins. Great imagery and such an eerie vibe.
The Repairer of Reputations- R.W. Chambers
I know the appeal of cosmic horror is IN the mystery, but I think it would’ve worked better for me in the greater context of the King in Yellow. That being said, so fun with the unreliable narrator and his mean thoughts.
The House of Sounds- M.P. Schiels
Conceptually interesting but altogether too muddled. I think there’s cool parts to it, and I think the ending is great.
The White People- Arthur Machen
Generally interesting but also stylistically a headache. You can use more than one paragraph over 30 pages it’s okay. I do think it goes hand in hand with the ideas in Inhabiant of Carcosa
The Willows- Algernon Blackwood
This one was my favorite. Atmospheric and dreamy and kind of a nightmare scenario. Interesting internal monologue and the conflict between man and nature. Love the idea of two worlds just happening to cross over at a certain point, and these two men being unlucky enough to camp in that overlap. Great ending.
The Jolly Corner- Henry James
I know James is supposed to be good but this has the most annoying prose on the planet. Unnecessary commas and run on sentences. I can appreciate style to a point. Blank stare read the whole thing. I think the concept is cool.
Seaton’s Aunt- Walter De La Mare
Like The Squaw, I don’t really think this is that cosmic horror, and furthermore I don’t really think it’s that scary at all. Not bad just, eh. Scary old lady, what’s next, ghosts?
The Colour Out of Space- H.P. Lovecraft
I like this one. Lovecraft (obviously) gets cosmic horror very well. Doesn’t really bother to explain much to you rather than what you can see, and it feels really eerie. I love the scene where Ammi finds Nahum’s wife. Great work.
MS. Found in a Bottle- Edgar Allan Poe
Not as good as some of Poe’s more known work, namely The Raven (I LOVE The Raven) but still spooky. The inherent spookiness in the vastness of the sea. There is something scary about finding someone in the midst of nothing.
The Squaw- Bram Stoker
Not really too spooky. Jarring and a little graphic but it’s all too predictable.
Moxon’s Master- Ambrose Bierce
Not all that remarkable.
The Damned Thing- Ambrose Bierce
Really cool. Don’t care for the framing device but the meat of the story is really fascinating. Evil invisible something and it kills a guy invisibly. Rules.
Inhabitant of Carcosa- Ambrose Bierce
I LOVE the image of the caveman walking through the ruins. Great imagery and such an eerie vibe.
The Repairer of Reputations- R.W. Chambers
I know the appeal of cosmic horror is IN the mystery, but I think it would’ve worked better for me in the greater context of the King in Yellow. That being said, so fun with the unreliable narrator and his mean thoughts.
The House of Sounds- M.P. Schiels
Conceptually interesting but altogether too muddled. I think there’s cool parts to it, and I think the ending is great.
The White People- Arthur Machen
Generally interesting but also stylistically a headache. You can use more than one paragraph over 30 pages it’s okay. I do think it goes hand in hand with the ideas in Inhabiant of Carcosa
The Willows- Algernon Blackwood
This one was my favorite. Atmospheric and dreamy and kind of a nightmare scenario. Interesting internal monologue and the conflict between man and nature. Love the idea of two worlds just happening to cross over at a certain point, and these two men being unlucky enough to camp in that overlap. Great ending.
The Jolly Corner- Henry James
I know James is supposed to be good but this has the most annoying prose on the planet. Unnecessary commas and run on sentences. I can appreciate style to a point. Blank stare read the whole thing. I think the concept is cool.
Seaton’s Aunt- Walter De La Mare
Like The Squaw, I don’t really think this is that cosmic horror, and furthermore I don’t really think it’s that scary at all. Not bad just, eh. Scary old lady, what’s next, ghosts?
The Colour Out of Space- H.P. Lovecraft
I like this one. Lovecraft (obviously) gets cosmic horror very well. Doesn’t really bother to explain much to you rather than what you can see, and it feels really eerie. I love the scene where Ammi finds Nahum’s wife. Great work.
April 21, 2025
D. Thin has assembled a collection of horror stories, with a heavy focus on cosmic horror, from writers of the 19th and early 20th century. I very much enjoyed the collection; there were a lot of works I hadn't read before, and even of those that I had--the Chambers and Lovecraft stories--I was happy to read again, and actually got some new appreciation out of them. To get the negative out of the way, the one real misfire of the set, in my opinion, was Bram Stoker's "The Squaw." As the title suggests, there's some general racism there, but it's really a story of grotesquery where animal murder leads to animal revenge. It's like Poe's "The Black Cat," but without the psychological nuance, and I'm not a fan of "The Black Cat" either.
Everything else slaps, albeit to varying degrees of slapitude. I'll focus on five highlights. There are three Ambrose Bierce stories, but my favourite of the set is "The Damned Thing," which is almost like if the Predator appeared at the end of the 19th century. Its height, though, is its incredibly moody opening. Edgar Allan Poe's "MS in a Bottle" starts off the set right, starting with just a mystery ship and going somewhere much weirder--I'm of the opinion every horror anthology from this time period needs a good ocean-adjacent horror story, and this is a good one. Arthur Machen's "The Twisted Ones" has a strong set up and a strong execution, with the diary of a girl who ventures too far into strange territories; I'm not sure the set up and execution totally fit together, but it was really interesting to see the story that inspired Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones novel. M. P. Shiel's "The House of Sounds" and Walter De La Mare's "Selton's Aunt" both get mentions as stories that feature a protagonist observing a miserable friend who's doomed from birth by their families; I hadn't heard of either author before, and I'll be looking them up. And finally, my favourite of the collection was Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," which was an absolute masterpiece of cosmic horror. It features two men who are sailing down the Danube and forced to take respite on an island during a torrential rise in the river; the island, however, is much worse than what they're trying to avoid.
I'd like to have seen a bit more diversity; I know there were some women writing cosmic horror in the era, for example. But this collection delivered exactly what it should, with some familiar, well-liked classics, and a bunch of stories I wasn't familiar with.
Everything else slaps, albeit to varying degrees of slapitude. I'll focus on five highlights. There are three Ambrose Bierce stories, but my favourite of the set is "The Damned Thing," which is almost like if the Predator appeared at the end of the 19th century. Its height, though, is its incredibly moody opening. Edgar Allan Poe's "MS in a Bottle" starts off the set right, starting with just a mystery ship and going somewhere much weirder--I'm of the opinion every horror anthology from this time period needs a good ocean-adjacent horror story, and this is a good one. Arthur Machen's "The Twisted Ones" has a strong set up and a strong execution, with the diary of a girl who ventures too far into strange territories; I'm not sure the set up and execution totally fit together, but it was really interesting to see the story that inspired Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones novel. M. P. Shiel's "The House of Sounds" and Walter De La Mare's "Selton's Aunt" both get mentions as stories that feature a protagonist observing a miserable friend who's doomed from birth by their families; I hadn't heard of either author before, and I'll be looking them up. And finally, my favourite of the collection was Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," which was an absolute masterpiece of cosmic horror. It features two men who are sailing down the Danube and forced to take respite on an island during a torrential rise in the river; the island, however, is much worse than what they're trying to avoid.
I'd like to have seen a bit more diversity; I know there were some women writing cosmic horror in the era, for example. But this collection delivered exactly what it should, with some familiar, well-liked classics, and a bunch of stories I wasn't familiar with.
October 17, 2023
Good introduction to a set of genre precursors I’d previously not read much of. Standouts for me were:
Chambers, “The Repairer of Reputations”: funnier than I was expecting! And a couple of the more interesting characters I’ve found in horror stories, a genre in which character is often subordinated.
Shiel, “The House of Sound”: the way I was imagining it, one of the coolest set pieces in fiction.
Machen, “The White People”: the varieties of horror I enjoy the most—folk elements, more emphasis on unhuman fey, mystifying creatures whose strangeness shares the world with us, than on slashers, undead, or tentacled aliens from outer space—bear the imprint of this story, either through direct influence or through unwitting parallel inscription. I see some of this in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Pagan Rabbi,” one of my favorite short stories.
Blackwood, “The Willows”: Blackwood walked so Vandermeer’s “Area X” could run.
De La Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”: great character studies, subtle peripheral horror.
Lovecraft, “The Colour out of Space”: a reread for me but I enjoyed it more this time, partly because of how filmic I realized it is. The narration guides the reader’s eye across a whole scene, a restless kind of immersion.
Chambers, “The Repairer of Reputations”: funnier than I was expecting! And a couple of the more interesting characters I’ve found in horror stories, a genre in which character is often subordinated.
Shiel, “The House of Sound”: the way I was imagining it, one of the coolest set pieces in fiction.
Machen, “The White People”: the varieties of horror I enjoy the most—folk elements, more emphasis on unhuman fey, mystifying creatures whose strangeness shares the world with us, than on slashers, undead, or tentacled aliens from outer space—bear the imprint of this story, either through direct influence or through unwitting parallel inscription. I see some of this in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Pagan Rabbi,” one of my favorite short stories.
Blackwood, “The Willows”: Blackwood walked so Vandermeer’s “Area X” could run.
De La Mare, “Seaton’s Aunt”: great character studies, subtle peripheral horror.
Lovecraft, “The Colour out of Space”: a reread for me but I enjoyed it more this time, partly because of how filmic I realized it is. The narration guides the reader’s eye across a whole scene, a restless kind of immersion.
December 29, 2021
My Other Seasonal read is trashy fiction from 150 years ago! hooray for trash!
Was very curious to read cuz i love lovecraft, and unanny, unsettling stuff so much, plus I never got to read any old gothic or whatever stuff in college.
Lotta stuff I loved The willows (about a creepy island in a river (like Nicolet island???) that has a mind of its own, or the kinda OG folk/fairy horror in the White People, and any thing by Ambrose Bierce. although when the stories didn't hit it was kinda a big bummer cuz some o this shit can be real dense.
But something that was kinda disturbing while read is that these stories of immense, undefinable horror, were written by so many fucked up dudes. Like of course we go huge xenophobes, but also fascists, and real deal sex criminals!! Made me queasy reading (and enjoying) some of those stories but in a sort of f’d up way it was almost thematically fitting that stories about unfathomable evil, were written by actually pretty evil dudes.
( I should say this was just a significant minority of the authors as far as i could tell, and not my beloved Ambrose Bierce who was also crazy but in a good way)
Was very curious to read cuz i love lovecraft, and unanny, unsettling stuff so much, plus I never got to read any old gothic or whatever stuff in college.
Lotta stuff I loved The willows (about a creepy island in a river (like Nicolet island???) that has a mind of its own, or the kinda OG folk/fairy horror in the White People, and any thing by Ambrose Bierce. although when the stories didn't hit it was kinda a big bummer cuz some o this shit can be real dense.
But something that was kinda disturbing while read is that these stories of immense, undefinable horror, were written by so many fucked up dudes. Like of course we go huge xenophobes, but also fascists, and real deal sex criminals!! Made me queasy reading (and enjoying) some of those stories but in a sort of f’d up way it was almost thematically fitting that stories about unfathomable evil, were written by actually pretty evil dudes.
( I should say this was just a significant minority of the authors as far as i could tell, and not my beloved Ambrose Bierce who was also crazy but in a good way)
September 5, 2024
3.5 rounded down.
The atmosphere in (nearly) all of the stories is wonderful. Dark, foreboding, full of some murky wonder or curiosity, maybe the looming presence of some vague threat. But boy oh boy is some of this writing bound up in pretense. Overwritten to the point of being stuffy, unnecessarily complex, and tiresome to work through. Yes, this was the predominant style of the time and I understand that. But when taken in such concentrated form and put up against so many other examples of similar styling it can wear a reader down. This particularly becomes an issue when partnered with Weird Fiction's tendency to imply and avoid plot points. I get that this was an attempt to amp up the tension and keep the horror atmospheric and sometimes I think it works really well. But, I left this collection thinking that these stories are probably better off read as individual stories over the course of a long time rather than read in short succession as a collection.
The essay at the end was well written and the collection itself was curated well. Of course the cover is beautiful and I'm happy to have the collection. But I left feeling more tired than I would have hoped.
The atmosphere in (nearly) all of the stories is wonderful. Dark, foreboding, full of some murky wonder or curiosity, maybe the looming presence of some vague threat. But boy oh boy is some of this writing bound up in pretense. Overwritten to the point of being stuffy, unnecessarily complex, and tiresome to work through. Yes, this was the predominant style of the time and I understand that. But when taken in such concentrated form and put up against so many other examples of similar styling it can wear a reader down. This particularly becomes an issue when partnered with Weird Fiction's tendency to imply and avoid plot points. I get that this was an attempt to amp up the tension and keep the horror atmospheric and sometimes I think it works really well. But, I left this collection thinking that these stories are probably better off read as individual stories over the course of a long time rather than read in short succession as a collection.
The essay at the end was well written and the collection itself was curated well. Of course the cover is beautiful and I'm happy to have the collection. But I left feeling more tired than I would have hoped.
September 15, 2018
"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away...There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us." - The Willows, Algernon Blackwood.
This is an excellent collection of some great weird tales from some of the best classic horror authors out there. Notably, the tales I enjoyed the most were from Ambrose Bierce (The Damned Thing, An Inhabitant of Carcosa), Algernon Blackwood (The Willows), and R.W. Chambers (The Repairer of Reputations), while Arthur Machen (The White People) and Henry James (The Corner) hold the weaker stories. I would highly recommend this for anyone looking to get into horror. It's not necessarily cosmic, Lovecraft contributes the most to that, but the stories are selected on their themes of the unknown and human fear in the face of powers weird and horrible. Most importantly it shows how there were more people contributing to this genre than just Lovecraft.
This is an excellent collection of some great weird tales from some of the best classic horror authors out there. Notably, the tales I enjoyed the most were from Ambrose Bierce (The Damned Thing, An Inhabitant of Carcosa), Algernon Blackwood (The Willows), and R.W. Chambers (The Repairer of Reputations), while Arthur Machen (The White People) and Henry James (The Corner) hold the weaker stories. I would highly recommend this for anyone looking to get into horror. It's not necessarily cosmic, Lovecraft contributes the most to that, but the stories are selected on their themes of the unknown and human fear in the face of powers weird and horrible. Most importantly it shows how there were more people contributing to this genre than just Lovecraft.
December 27, 2020
4.5 stars!
This was an excellently chosen collection of short stories to represent the weird fiction genre, and the breath and depth of range that it possesses. I would certainly recommend this to someone who has no previous experience with weird fiction, as this book contains many of the well known classics/cornerstones of the genre. That being said, more seasoned readers should probably skip this one since most likely you would have come across most of these stories by now. I consider myself quite new to weird fiction and I've already read 3 from this collection. Nevertheless, I had a blast with these stories and I couldn't help but be impressed with not only the prose of these authors but their collective ability to evoke the strangest atmospheres and bring forth dark, elusive concepts into examination. Overall, I've stumbled upon another winner of a book!
"Fear is the cement and solvent of this and every world. Even the gods tremble."
This was an excellently chosen collection of short stories to represent the weird fiction genre, and the breath and depth of range that it possesses. I would certainly recommend this to someone who has no previous experience with weird fiction, as this book contains many of the well known classics/cornerstones of the genre. That being said, more seasoned readers should probably skip this one since most likely you would have come across most of these stories by now. I consider myself quite new to weird fiction and I've already read 3 from this collection. Nevertheless, I had a blast with these stories and I couldn't help but be impressed with not only the prose of these authors but their collective ability to evoke the strangest atmospheres and bring forth dark, elusive concepts into examination. Overall, I've stumbled upon another winner of a book!
"Fear is the cement and solvent of this and every world. Even the gods tremble."
June 3, 2022
Fun and creepy little collection - skipped the Henry James story entirely - couldn't make it through a single paragraph, but there were some other highlights.
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations" - just a freaky madman tale, very fun and modern
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds" - I want to run a DND one-shot just in this house alone. Incredibly weird ideation and execution, but left an imprint.
Arthur Machen, "The White People" - this is an early horror classic, and while I wasn't superbly scared, appreciated the style.
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows" - otherworldly environmental horror - really enjoyed the setting
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt" - very subtly freaky, made me scared of old people
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations" - just a freaky madman tale, very fun and modern
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds" - I want to run a DND one-shot just in this house alone. Incredibly weird ideation and execution, but left an imprint.
Arthur Machen, "The White People" - this is an early horror classic, and while I wasn't superbly scared, appreciated the style.
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows" - otherworldly environmental horror - really enjoyed the setting
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt" - very subtly freaky, made me scared of old people
October 30, 2025
Standouts for me:
"MS. Found in a Bottle" - one of Poe's weirdest tales, seems to anticipate Kafka and Borges.
"The Damned Thing" - excellent.
"The House of Sounds" - this was a weird one, I didn't like the writing but the setting was very strange and it was good overall.
"The White People" - I have a hard time with Machen's style and had to listen to an audiobook of this one, which was great.
"Seaton's Aunt" - this was one of my favorites in the collection.
"The Jolly Corner" - I wanted to like this more but James' style is too much for me.
(I have read "The Repairer of Reputations", "The Willows", and "The Colour Out of Space" and didn't re-read them, but I remember them all as great.)
"MS. Found in a Bottle" - one of Poe's weirdest tales, seems to anticipate Kafka and Borges.
"The Damned Thing" - excellent.
"The House of Sounds" - this was a weird one, I didn't like the writing but the setting was very strange and it was good overall.
"The White People" - I have a hard time with Machen's style and had to listen to an audiobook of this one, which was great.
"Seaton's Aunt" - this was one of my favorites in the collection.
"The Jolly Corner" - I wanted to like this more but James' style is too much for me.
(I have read "The Repairer of Reputations", "The Willows", and "The Colour Out of Space" and didn't re-read them, but I remember them all as great.)
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