Tales of Terror and Darkness

by Algernon Blackwood

Part One: Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural
Part Two: Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre

Forty three stories including:

Running Wolf
The Trod
The Glamour of the Snow
The Pikestaffe Case
The Lost Valley
Chinese Magic
First Hate
The Sacrifice
The Damned
The Sea Fit
The Destruction of Smith
Initiation

Genres: Horror, Fiction

794 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869–1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".

Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of northwest Kent) and educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas." Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, and, throughout his adult life, an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was very successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Blackwood: "He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere." His powerful story "The Willows," which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only "foremost of all" Blackwood's tales but the best "weird tale" of all time.

Among his thirty-odd books, Blackwood wrote a series of stories and short novels published as John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (1908), which featured a "psychic detective" who combined the skills of a Sherlock Holmes and a psychic medium. Blackwood also wrote light fantasy and juvenile books.

Reviews

[Side Sloppers]

A great collection of Blackwood’s short-stories, divided into two sections: ‘Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural’, and ‘Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre’. I definitely preferred the former to the latter, as the former seemed a little more thought-out and, honestly, spooky. There were still some bangers in the second book though. A sturdy introduction to his work.

[Mavis Hewitt]

Considering all by same author I thought these a very mixed bag. Also this edition was full of typesetting mistakes, some of which made rereading necessary e.g. not a park wall, a dark wall!