Strange Tales from the Strand Magazine

by Jack Adrian (Editor, Introduction, Essays), Julian Symons (Foreword)

Containing twenty-nine stories of the weird and uncanny, all originally published in the Strand, this collection is an enthralling mix of horror and the supernatural, unnatural disasters, madness, and revenge. We read of a germ that turned the world blind in Edgar Wallace's "The Black Grippe." In "A Sense of the Future," the world supply of oil gives out, cars become obsolete, and after three months we have returned to the days of horse-drawn carriages. In other tales, a camera takes pictures of the future, and a 1971 newspaper is pushed through a mail slot forty years earlier. With spine-tingling stories from the likes of Sapper, Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and a comic fantasy by H.G. Wells, as well as two tales from the children's writer E. Nesbit, Strange Tales from the Strand provides a rich collection for all lovers of the macabre.


CONTENTS
All But Empty (1947) by Graham Greene
Lord Beden's Motor (1901) by Harris Burland
The Tarn (1923) by Hugh Walpole
Resurgam (1915) by Rina Ramsay
The Railway Carriage (1931) by F. Tennyson Jesse
The Bell (1946) by Beverley Nichols
His Brother's Keeper (1922) by W. W. Jacobs
Touch and Go (1926) by Sapper
Waxworks (1922) by W. L. George
White Spectre (1950) by B. L. Jacot
'Tickets, Please!' non-genre (1919) by D. H. Lawrence
A Torture by Hope (1891) by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
A Horrible Fright (1894) by L. T. Meade
The Case of Roger Carboyne (1892) by H. Greenhough Smith
The Orchestra of Death (1918) by Ianthe Jerrold
The Lizard (1898) by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
Inexplicable (1917) by L. G. Moberly
The Prophetic Camera (1922) by L. de Giberne Sieveking
Cavalanci's Curse (1899) by Henry A. Hering
The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper (1932) by H. G. Wells
The Black Grippe (1920) by Edgar Wallace
The Fog (1908) by Morley Roberts
The Thames Valley Catastrophe (1897) by Grant Allen
A Sense of the Future (1924) by Martin Swayne
The Silver Mirror (1908) by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Haunted House (1913) by E. Nesbit
How It Happened (1913) by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Power of Darkness (1905) by E. Nesbit
The Horror of the Heights (1913) by Arthur Conan Doyle

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Mystery, Horror, Anthologies

373 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 1992

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

FIRST TIER - an anthology that serves an overview of THE British popular short fiction magazine of its day (most famous for featuring Sherlock Holmes, of course), this focuses on the various "strange" tales that appeared during the magazine's run (the detective and mystery fiction was covered in Detective Stories from the Strand. Quite an entertaining read, with lots of semi-forgotten but choice stories. If you like older fiction, and British fiction, it's worth your time.

SECOND TIER - This anthology of strange fiction is broken up into themes: Revenants (that is to say, ghost stories), Murder and Madness, Sheer Melodrama, Superbeasts (monsters), The Light Fantastic (comedic fantasy), Unnatural Disasters, a section for D.H. Lawrence's single story to appear in the magazine, and a section at the end for two of its most popular authors (Arthur Conan Doyle & E. Nesbit). The selections are quite good (you, of course, have to give a little leeway for their origins - late 19th to early 20th century) with some really solid writing throughout (which I will expand on in the third tier). Most entertaining were editor Sinclair's introduction and theme essays - the editor in me really enjoyed the introduction (the book is dedicated to the magazine's various editors through the years - jolly nice!), which does a very good job placing the magazine in its larger cultural context (short-fiction for the middle classes, light entertainment for railway travelers), gives an idea of the field (competitors, the Strand's innovations in page arrangement, typeface and interior illustration that served to break up the monolithic "text block" field of older mags), approach (what writers made it in, and who didn't) and the ups and downs of its history (various editorial tenures, the eschewing of serials and inclusion of articles and essays to break things up, the war years, the waning years). I chuckled at the critical distinction he makes between there being no Sax Rohmer ("not much better than a bad writer") in the mag's run, but plenty of Sapper ("a bad writer", true, but also "a fine storyteller"), and his note that the Strand was also the place for strong comedy writing of the day (P.G. Wodehouse and W.W. Jacobs). Really, this is a pleasing and broad selection of fiction (especially if you like the time period) with some nice variety.

THIRD TIER - Let's take these by sections instead of quality.

...and dispatch with the "Odd Man Out", the only D.H. Lawrence story to appear ever in the magazine, "Tickets, Please!" It's kind of a ringer because it's not really a "strange story" by any stretch. But it is quite good and powerful, starting as a sketch of how a North Country tram is operated and staffed, and then moving focus to train inspector John Raynor, a notorious jack-a-lad who tomcats his way through the female conductor staff, and how his latest conquest determines to get revenge after being callously discarded, said revenge involving a gathering of Raynor's previous women. Well-done.

the book's final section, "Two Storytellers", gives a special amount of space to two authors whose names became synonymous with The Strand, Arthur Conan Doyle and E. Nesbit. "The Haunted House" by Nesbit is a bit of a wash, a piece of melodrama in which a man accidentally finds himself answering an ad to investigate a haunted house, which turns out to be nothing of the kind (although there is a threat to his life) - this is proto-pulp magazine type stuff, but fun (a secret laboratory in the old crypt!). Nesbit's other piece, though, "The Power of Darkness", is quite a nice bit of suspense writing, as two friend's quarrel and one bets the other he won't stay overnight in the waxworks exhibit - the ending is obvious but extremely well-handled and the build-up to it is quite masterful. Doyle, meanwhile, appears here with "The Silver Mirror" (a reading of which can be listened to here) - in which an overworked accountant begins to see visions in an antique mirror. It's an effective little ghost story, a bit undone by the passivity of the main character - his only positive action is to have a nervous breakdown at the climax - (then again, passivity is a common problem with ghost stories of the period anyway) but intriguing for the way that the stress of his rushed job (helping pore over ledgers to provide the proof to put a white-collar criminal behind bars) causes the man to be susceptible to the supernatural visions. "How It Happened" (which can be heard here) was a reread and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's the breathless account of losing control of a motor car on a steep hill and the ending, while obvious, is well-deployed (one has to give it to Doyle for the realizing the piece was more effective if he maintained brevity). Finally, his "The Horror Of The Heights" (which we ran on Pseudopod here) is the last testament of an adventurous aviator who (while trying to break the current height record) flies into an "aerial jungle" populated by monstrous, translucent aerial jellyfish. A solid monster yarn.

Speaking of monsters, the "Superbeasts" section has two stories. "The Lizard" by C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne has an amateur spelunker stumble across a prehistoric lizard he accidentally releases, which pursues him - fun, but Doyle did it better (if twelve years later) in "The Terror of Blue John Gap." Meanwhile, in L.G. Moberly's "Inexplicable", a young couple buy a home and have to contend with a cursed carved table and the dark forms that thump and crawl their way around the house, scaring the servants. A fun bit of thrilling nonsense.

"The Light Fantastic," which offers some comedy-fantasy, was probably the weakest section here (although I'm not a fan of the genre, either). A variation of the famous Stradivarius story is played out in "Cavalanci's Curse" by Henry A. Hering, in which a cursed violin forces its owner to play accompaniment as it plays itself - cute and inconsequential. L. de Giberne Sieveking's "The Prophetic Camera" is about exactly that - the old saw of the camera that takes pictures of the future. Usually used for a conte cruel or crime scenario, here the central novelty is exploited for light humor - probably the most interesting part was when the wife realized that the strange objects in the street shot of the future were cars, but of an unusual shape, and that she wasn't in the picture because she had died in the interim(!). On those same lines, one of H.G. Wells' last pieces of fiction appears here, "The Queer Story Of Brownlow's Newspaper" in which a man is delivered the wrong newspaper...from 40 years in the future (1971, to be exact). Unfortunately, it's accidentally destroyed the next day and so clues must be gleaned from a drunkard's memory of what he read the night before: a world government, environmental concerns, topless fashions - Wells in speculative mode, essentially.

The "Sheer Melodrama" section has it's ups and downs, as might be expected. On the down side, Herbert Greenhough Smith's "The Case Of Roger Carboyne" is one of those "unsolvable mysteries" type things (a man in a mountain pass disappears in seconds, and is later found dead *higher up* the mountain) which I generally find to be exercises in boring frustration - my solution was close, but not exactly right (and was as absurd and ridiculous as the one given - albeit, not *impossible*). "A Horrible Fright" by L.T. Meade finds a modern young woman daring to take a shared carriage on a trip to Dublin, only for the other occupant - a glowering, bushy-bearded gent - to menace her into shaving him! A fun time-waster in the blood-and-thunder- mode. Meanwhile, in the classic conte cruel "A Torture by Hope" by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a doomed Jewish prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition realizes that his cell door has accidentally been left unlocked. Great stuff. Finally, a famed dancer finds that her faddish dalliance with revolutionaries 13 years ago - and her subsequent betrayal of one of them to authorities - comes back to haunt her despite them all now being dead in "The Orchestra of Death" by Ianthe Jerrold. This was interesting - it's kind of the classic "murder will out trope", but played as a testing of the sensualist/bohemian commitment to a political cause. Neat, I dug it.

"Murder will out" raises its head in the "Murder And Madness" section, which starts with W.W. Jacobs' "His Brother's Keeper" (long on my "to read" list). A man impulsively kills someone and tries to hide to body in his garden, only to find his subconscious guilt keeps tripping him up. Well done! On the more lurid end of things, the fateful shock that turned a woman's hair white involves the purchase of a perfect home (where a gruesome murder recently occurred) and the trouble keeping superstitious servants (an interesting bit of the story), and then a horrible midnight visitation. All this is in Sapper's "Touch And Go," which kind of proves the editor's statement (re: Sapper) earlier noted. Then, Walter Lionel George's "Waxworks (another reread for me) opens charmingly as a working class London couple on a date decide to duck into a dusty old waxwork chamber of horrors to get in out of the rain, but find each tableaux more disturbing, a wonderful transition from bight and chipper to unnerving & ambiguous, ran it on Pseudopod - here. Finally, in "The White Spectre" by B.L. Jacot a plane crashes in Iceland, but one of the small group of survivors eking out an existence on the mountaintop is a homicidal murderer! The climax of this piece is not as surprising as it once was (if it even was then, in 1950) but the story is told in a terse, clipped voice that was fun to read.

The "Revenants" section has a nice selection of styles in its ghost story choices. Opening with a classic, "All But Empty" (more famously known as "A Little Place Off The Edgeware Road") by Graham Greene, this follows a man who frequents a second run silent film theater because it's usually empty, but this time he's joined by a talkative stranger who intimates an earlier act of violence. Nicely done, sparklingly written, this has an eerie setting and smartly ends on its punchline. "Lord Beden's Motor" has an early motor car enthusiast repeatedly coming across a bizarre, speeding, smoking vehicle. While the overall trajectory of Harris Burland's story will be familiar to the seasoned reader, it really shines in the details - not just the strange, quasi-steampunk vehicle that cannot be caught, but the actual writing of the chase, engaging and thrilling (4o miles an hour!) while also oddly charming. Ran on Pseudopod here. In classic mode again, we have Hugh Walpole's "The Tarn" which has a delectable opening (why one misanthropic, reclusive author detests another, always sunny, confederate - he blames him for all his misfortunes) then moves to murder by drowning enacted on the jolly fellow, only for ghostly vengeance to unexpectedly have its way. Really, an excellent little weird tale - again, the trajectory is familiar but the odd little details (the hills like India rubber, the odd impression of being stalked by a body of water) and especially the writing (the climax is a masterclass in suspense deployment) make this a winner. "Resurgam" by Rina Ramsay starts with a visiting priest being struck by the look of a strange girl in his congregation, only to be told the girl he saw was a suicide. But something seems miss, and so he unravels a murder. Nice and sedate. F. Tennyson Jesse's "The Railway Car" is something like a "sentimental ghost story", but unexpectedly develops from a man sharing a train car with two strangers, the discussion of the recent execution of a criminal, and then a horrific rail crash and rescue (thrillingly told). Also some nice details (such as how the public treated those who were employed as executioners). "The Bell" - imagine Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster, except Bertie kind of always resented how much control Jeeves had over his life. But then, Jeeves dies, and Bertie realizes how helpless he is, while exulting in his new found freedom - until he forgetfully rings the service bell, and can hear something coming in answer. A nice little creeper from Beverley Nichols.

Finally, I left the "Unnatural Disasters" section for last because of how much fun it was to read. Granted, despite his reputation, Edgar Wallace's "The Black Grippe" is a bit too sketchy for the disaster scenario it lays out - delayed effect of a passing infection is that almost all the population goes blind, but for how long... - and could have benefited from a better structure. But still, interesting. On a similar riff, but told on a stronger character level, is "The Fog" by Morley Roberts. A profound pea-souper has paralyzed London and a Lord and his wealthy entourage must resort to being helped by a blind beggar, who has been navigating in this mode for most of his life. As lawlessness increases and society breaks down, a daring escape attempt to leave the apocalypse behind is hatched... I really dug this one. The ending is kind of maudlin, but I could certainly see running this on Pseudopod. Similarly, Grant Allen's "The Thames Valley Catastrophe" is a recounting of the sudden volcanic eruption causes a wall of lava to sweep down the Thames Valley toward London - and the one man who knows its coming has to race - by bicycle! - to save his family! This was like Victorian era version of our modern, widescreen CGI disaster epics (only, replace jumping-away-from-a-fireball with pedaling-uphill-to-escape-flowing-basalt!). Pseudopod ep. here. Finally, in the oddly prophetic "A Sense Of The Future" by Martin Swayne, a wealthy man shifts all of his investments into cornering the horse market, as he successfully predicts that oil supplies are going to run out! And they do! And then civilization is saved by the forced slowdown from the mad hurtle of progress! Cool!

And that's all.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Strand, of course, was one of the most popular magazines of Victorian and Edwardian times, up until around the 1950's. As Jack Adrian points out in his introduction, The Strand was noted for two things: dectective fiction and 'strange tales', which included ghost stories, stories of darkness and the bizarre or inexplicable. Adrian has culled twenty-nine classic stories of weird fiction from this publication. Of course, there are several by Arthur Conan Doyle (who published his Sherlock Holmes stories originally in The Strand), but many other popular writers as well, such as Edgar Wallace (once the most successful writer on the planet), H.G. Wells, Graham Greene, Grant Allan (a personal favorite), "Sapper", Hugh Walpole, and Edith Nesbit. Most of the tales date from the 1980's-1920's, but there are a few more recent ones dating from the 1930's-50's as well.

One feature that I especially appreciated was the arrangement of the book into thematic sections such as "Revenants," "Murder and Madness," "Unnatural Disasters," and so on. There's a short biographical/bibliographical section on each of the authors featured in the various sections which is nice as some of the authors are not that well known today.

There's a companion volume to this one, also edited by Adrian, called Detective Stories from the Strand.

[Ann Nichols · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before I read this anthology, The Strand Magazine brought to mind only Sherlock Holmes. My three-and-one-half stars rating is only an average. Judging by the stories here, Mr. Adrian is correct about their writers knowing how to entertain. The stories I gave only three stars I would probably have rated higher if I hadn't been reading strange fiction since the fifth grade, very close to five decades ago.

When I buy an anthology of weird fiction, I like to check the table of contents to see if at least half of them are unfamiliar. Of the stories here, I'd read only 'A Torture of Hope' before, and I'm pretty sure that was for some class. That makes this collection a particularly happy find.

Here's my rating for and a short description of each story:

'All But Empty' by Graham Greene ***
Sitting next to a chatty stranger in a cinema shouldn't be a big problem when the movie is silent.

'Lord Beden's Motor' by Mr. J. B. Harris-Burland ***1/2
Lord Beden is determined to catch up with that strange vehicle no matter how fast he has to drive or how bad the road -- and seat belts and air bags haven't been invented yet.

'The Tarn' by Hugh Walpole *****
A man who blames the bitter failures of his life on another finally has the object of his hatred in his power.

'Resurgam' by Rina Ramsay ***
A parson from a London slum can't imagine what could possibly be making the parson of a peaceful country town a nervous wreck.

'The Railway Carriage' by Ms. F. Tennyson Jesse***
There's something rather creepy about the other passengers in Solange's railway car.

'The Bell' by Mr. Beverley Nichols ***
A middle-aged man with a weak heart contemplates the freedom he'll have now that his control freak manservant is dead.

'His Brother's Keeper' by Mr. W. W. Jacobs****
Can't a poor, honest murderer get a bit of peace?

'Touch and Go' by Sapper [Herman Cyril McNeile]****
If you knowingly rent a house where a brutal murder once took place, you have to expect difficulties keeping servants.

'Waxworks' by Mr. W. L. George ***1/2
We have our cover story and the look of fear on the visitors is deserved. Here's a link to one of the lesser-known exhibits:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/10/mur...

'White Spectre' by Mr. B. L. Jacot***1/2
Six plane crash survivors holed up in a cave in the mountains, then there were five...

'Tickets, Please' by D. H. Lawrence**** [uncut version]
A handsome young ladies' man may have been dating a few too many of his co-workers, heh-heh...

'A Torture by Hope' by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam [Philippe-Auguste. Compte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam]****
A very nasty story set in the bad old days of the Spanish Inquisition.

'A Horrible Fright' by Mrs. L. T. Meade***
A foolhardy girl soon wishes she'd stayed in a ladies' railway carriage as her father had advised.

'The Case of Roger Carboyne' by Mr. H. Greenhough Smith***1/2
It's the late 19th century and there are no helicopters, so how could the marks of a body being dragged suddenly stop, leaving only unbroken snow? (From my copy of The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, I believe that when the Coroner asks if the police are entirely at fault, he is using 'fault' in the hunting jargon sense of being at a loss or puzzled.)

'The Orchestra of Death by Ianthe Jerrold***1/2
A dancer fears she will be mudered, but the show must go on.

'The Lizard' by C. J. Cutcliffe-Hyne***1/2
A hunter and cave enthusiast finds something special during a new exploration.

'Inexplicable' by Ms. L. G. Moberly****
The couple are so pleased with their new house, especially that beautiful carved crocodile or alligator-legged table that the last tenant left behind for some reason. (Both terms are used.)

'The Prophetic Camera' by L. de Giberne Sieveking [L = 'Lancelot,' also known as 'Lance Sieveking']***1/2
Yes, the camera takes pictures of the future. My favorite reaction was the wife's.

'Cavalanci's Curse' by Henry A. Hering ***1/2
The curse involves magic violins. The dialogue of the non-English characters made me snicker.

'The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper' by H. G. Wells [Herbert George]***
1930s Wells' idea of what the world would be like in 1971 is good for some chuckles. Note: 'queer' is being used in its old sense of being strange, odd, weird, etc. Also, when Brownlow's state is described as having been on the gayer side of sobriety, it means he was happy, cheerful, blithe, etc.

'The Black Grippe' by Edgar Wallace***1/2
A London doctor's animal testing shows that what seemed to be a minor pandemic will make people blind for days, and he tries to warn the world.

'The Fog' by Morley Roberts*****
London is choked by a fog we'd probably call 'smog' that's so dark and thick that the people can't see. A blind veteran is trying to keep a small group alive. The descriptions of mob behavior are very believable.

'The Thames Valley Catastrophe' by Grant Allen****
A man tries to warn others of the terrible danger they're in while he races to rescue his family.

'A Sense of the Future' by Martin Swayne***
If a canny financier is correct, the world's oil will soon run out. There'll be no more petrol (gasoline)! What's a car lover to do?

'The Silver Mirror' by Arthur Conan Doyle***1/2
An accountant's antique mirror starts showing him a dramatic scene from the past.

'The Haunted House' by E. Nesbit****
A young man answers an advertisement to investigate a haunting. Is it ghost or a vampire that infests the place?

'How It Happened' by Arthur Conan Doyle***
We get the story through a writing medium [a medium who practices automatic writing?]. It's rather like one of those mystery shows where the audience is shown the murderer before the first commercial, so the rest of the show is spent wondering how or when the hero/ine will figure it out.

'The Power of Darkness' by E. Nesbit****
Two friends, both in love with the same woman, have bet each other that neither could bear to spend a night alone in a wax museum.

'The Horror of the Heights' by Arthur Conan Doyle****
In a story published the year before World War I started, a pilot is determined to take his little monoplane more than 40,000 feet into the air -- even though he suspects he'll encounter something deadly. I don't know if the descriptions of the plane's workings are accurate, but the even the thought of going that high in a plane of that era certainly scared me.

I recommend this collection to weird fiction fans who enjoy late 19th through the first half of 20th century writing.

[Alison C · Rating 4 out of 5]

The original Strand Magazine was published in London from 1891 to 1950; its initial slogan described it as “a monthly magazine costing sixpence *but worth a shilling*,” which I find hilarious. On the 100th anniversary of the initial publication, Oxford University Press released this and a companion volume (“Detective Stories from The Strand”) to celebrate its accomplishments. The tales in this anthology are all somehow “weird” or uncanny, and feature some of the most notable writers of the day: Arthur Conan Doyle (with non-Sherlock stories), E. Nesbit (decidedly NOT children’s tales), Graham Greene, H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and more. The structure is a little odd: each section of the anthology (“Revenants,” “Murder and Madness,” “Odd Man Out,” “Sheer Melodrama,” “Superbeasts,” “Unnatural Disasters” and “Two Storytellers”) is prefaced with brief biographies of the writers featured in the section, but once the reader gets used to that system, the stories are easily entered into and extremely enjoyable. Of course, given the time and place, pretty much each story deals primarily if not exclusively with rich white men, but that’s what people were writing and reading back then. An historical treasure-trove, really; recommended!

[Onur Sazak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The denizens of horror, mystery and crime writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries truly put their colleauges in the 21s century to shame in terms of creativity, imagination, and wordcraft. Thanks to Jack Adrian and Julian Symons, we have Strange Tales from the Strand, which provides ample proof of this postulation in the form of the hair-raising short stories by the revered storytellers of macabre and suspese from the 1800s and early 1900s . Strange Tales from the Strand, so far as I know, is the only compilation that brings to the surface the hidden gems of master story tellers like Arthur Conan Doyle, E. Nesbit, Greenhough Smith, Graham Greene, H.G. Wells. I read every page at the edge of my seat. I was especially moved by the stories that depicted certain authors' vision of the future and that portrayed a dystopian future disfigured by natural disasters and global calamities, which even a hundred and so years ago were a mere result of human greed, ignorance, and so-called superiority.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1991, 'Strange Tales from the Strand' features a selection of 29 short stories published in 'Strand' over the years 1891-1950. Since a previous volume covered a selection of detective stories from 'Strand' during it's time, the stories in this volume don't much from that sub-genre, so the editor has tried to set up various categories of 'strange' tales, by a variety of stunning authors. In amongst this lot is a story, 'Tickets, Please!' by DH Lawrence which defies categorising but is nevertheless terrific. A lot of the stories have not seen the light of day for many years, so this is a great showcase of forgotten talent. One or two tales are a bit flat and predictable, but the rest are a real treat.

[Kezia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't let the lurid dime-store cover fool you. In here lurks some dark tales.

I'm not terribly into this genre (these genres?) and originally checked this out of the library because it was the only book available with "A Torture by Hope" by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a master decadent. The D.H. Lawrence story was a nice surprise. These two stick out like sore thumbs, the former because it's superior, the latter because it features no murder, ghost, or disaster--though to a philanderer of the early 20th century, what happens to our protagonist counts as horror.

Otherwise, as anthologies go, this one's pretty even. I got a lot out of the essays that introduce each section and there are no spoilers, so go ahead and read them as intended.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 3 out of 5]

I. Reventants
1. Graham Greene: "All But Empty" - set in a 1930s cinema showing silent films, twist ending spoiled by being included in this section.
2. J. B. Harris-Burland: "Lord Beden's Motor" - an early experimental car reappears as a ghostly vision. Also in Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911
3. Hugh Walpole: "The Tarn" - literary rivalry and murder.
4. Rina Ramsay: "Resurgam" - a haunting in a country parish church.
5. F. Tennyson Jesse: "The Railway Carriage" - a hangman rides a train with an executed man's mother.
6. Beverly Nichols: "The Bell" - a man lives in total dependency on his servant, who has just been killed in an accident.
II. Murder and Madness
7. W. W. Jacobs: "His Brother's Keeper" - a murder is compelled to reveal his crime in his sleep.
8. Sapper: ""Touch and Go" - On a ship bound for the East, a young husband tells how his 20-year-old bride's hair turned whit overnight. Of course, a homicidal maniac and severed head are involved.
9. W. L. George: "Waxworks" - Seeking shelter during a rainstorm, a young couple find a waxworks display containing a real corpse.
10. B. L. Jacot: "White Spectre" - There are six survivors od a plane crash in the mountains of Iceland, and one of them is a murderer!
III. Odd Man Out
11. D. H. Lawrence: "'Tickets, Please!'" - Vengeance is taken on a tramcar inspector by his abandoned girlfriends.
IV. Sheer Melodrama
12. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam: "A Torture of Hope" - A Poe / Blackwoods like Inquisition tale.
13. L. T. Meade: "A Horrible Fright" - A young girl on a nighttime train journey is forced to aid a fugitive in a rather fetishistic way: cutting off all his hair and shaving him.
14. H. Greenbough Smith: "The Case of Roger Carboyne" - A mysterious death in the mountains: a traveler appears to have fallen up to a plateau from the path on which he disappeared.
15. Ianthe Jerrold: "The Orchestra of Death" - During WWI a French dancer betrays an oath to a secret society to expose a German agent in the British cabinet.
V. Superbeasts
16. C. J. Cutcliffe-Hyne: "The Lizard" - A spelunker awakens a dinosaur.
17. L. G. Moberly: "Inexplicable" - in an old house, a carved table enables an infestation of ghostly alligators.
VI. The Light Fantastic
18. L. de Giberne Sieveking: "The Prophetic Camera" - A camera left in a pawnshop takes pictures of the future.
19. Henry A. Hering: "Cavalanci's Curse" - a self-playing violin forces its owner to be its accompanist.
20. H. G. Wells: "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper" - An intoxicated man comes home to find a newspaper from 40 years in the future has been delivered to him. Allows Wells to indulge in fantasies of world government and technocracy.
VII. Unnatural Disasters
21. Edgar Wallace: "The Black Grippe" - An epidemic of temporary blindness attacks the world. Not nearly as much is made of this "cozy catastrophe" as might be. Anticipates The Day of the Triffids
22. Morley Roberts: "The Fog" - Despite its brevity, a full-bore cozy catastrophe, a fog descends on London so thick that it effectively renders the population blind. Full of the incident and sweep missing from the previous story.
23. Grant Allen: "The Thames Valley Catastrophe" - An eyewitness account as a volcanic eruption inundates London in lava. Also in Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911
24. Martin Swayne: "A Sense of the Future" - peak oil arrives suddenly in the 1920s. A dystopia becomes a utopia.
VIII. Two Storytellers
25. Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Silver Mirror" - An overworked accountant sees a historical murder in an antique mirror.
26. E. Nesbit: "The Haunted House" - A mad scientist tale rather than a ghost story. Also in The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror
27. Arthur Conan Doyle: "How It Happened" - This would be a "strange tale" for most readers, but for a Spiritualist, a realistic account of the experience of dying. Also in Tales of Unease
28. E. Nesbit: "The Power of Darkness" - A wager concerning a night spent alone in a waxworks has dire consequences for the more confident of the bettors. Also in The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror
29. Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Horror of the Heights" - An improbable premise is well supported by Doyle's evocative writing and circumstantial account of his tale. Also in Tales of Unease

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of shorts. Crime, mystery, supernatural. One of my favourites (Tickets, Please!) was one that the editor didn't seem found of. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote more than just Sherlock Holmes tales.

[Barry Faulk]

Admirers of J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World will want to read Grant Allen's "The Thames Valley Catastrophe," a much earlier (1897) tale of Underwater London, drowned by a fissure-eruption.

[Bill Borre]

Touch and Go is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror

[Vanessa]

strange indeed...