Acquire Great Tales Of Terror And The Supernatural Penned By Herbert A. Wise Rendered As Manuscript

Murderous spouses, ancient curses, talking corpses, seductive ghostsover a thousand pages long, presentingstories fromauthors, this collection is massive and dated, halfway a historical fragment and halfway a resource, fascinating but deep enough to drown in.
It's so vast that it's almost impossible to review: no single opinion can reflect so many stories, There are a few classics here, just as many minor offerings from famous authors, and plenty of forgettable selections, Half the joy is simply seeing what's included, because not all of these authors or stories would be considered genre nowand as such, this collection is a fascinating snapshot of the creation of canon and genre.
The exclusions are also telling: there's only one vampire story

because "these stories all tend to be very much alike", and only three female authors which seems to be a fault of the general climate more than the Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural's enthusiastic editors.


As pleasure reading is concerned, the introduction recommends slow going and I concur, Volumes like this are longterm bedside companions try to hurry through them, and the stories become so many bricks in a wall, Classic horror has a different pace from modern horror, often finding an uneasy balance between atmospheric subtlety and heavyhanded themes such that it both bores and batters, But then along will come a story like Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" with its haunting, insidious beauty, or Lovecraft's superbly crafted imaginings of the unknown, or even Blackwood's tales, deeply flawed but rewarding patience with fantastic atmosphere.
There are also authors and stories which helped create the genre but are now forgotten, and pleasant surprises such as Benson's skincrawling "Caterpillars, " There's more emphasis on action than modern readers may expect, and a sprinkling of gallows humor, There are too many duds to recommend it to a casual reader, and the selections are too arbitrary to make it the only classic horror anthology you own, but Great Tales is often fascinating and occasionally great fun.
It's an enjoyable, if random, overview for fans of the genre, and I loved it, To my surprise, the anthology is still in printso if you stumble upon it, I well recommend you pick it up and read a few tales, Most of the stories in this massive book are by English/Scottish/Welsh men and written during the period, So while to modern sensibilities that sounds pretty restrictive or exclusionary, keep in mind the book was put together in thes, Nonetheless it stands as a definitive collection of ghost, horror, and thriller stories, No one who calls themselves a fan or scholar of horror fiction has any excuse for not being familiar with most if not all of the stories in this book.
Many of them are undisputed classics and have been reprinted many times, so you may be already be familiar with them even if you've never seen this book.
But if you're a fan of scary stories, you owe it to yourself to look over the table of contents and if there's more than a couple stories you aren't already familiar with, then hie yourself to the local library or take whatever action is needed to get yourself in proximity with this book and read those stories.
And maybe reread all the other familiar ones, too, There are stories in this book that first read over forty years ago, Upon rereading them recently, I've found I have new ways of appreciating and approaching them, Even though most of these stories are timeless, it's almost as if I've changed over time, Funny how that works. Ever since I read this anthology which is one of the best of its kind, Ive been imaging a counterfactual scenario: What if Phyllis Fraser and Herbert A.
Wise had put out a sequel, say ten or fifteen years later What stories would they include

So of course then I had to fantasyedit my own hypothetical anthology.
The rules are that the stories must be consonant in tone with those in the original, and have been published in thes or earlier, The original anthology hadstories and one poem, so this does as well assembled in alphabetical order although I didnt divide the supernatural from the terror, as my edition of the Fraser did.
My anthology:

. Ryunosuke Akutagawa, A Christian Death
, William Beckford, The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah
, Tristan Bernard, The Exile
, Ambrose Bierce, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
, James Blish, There Shall Be No Darkness
, Jorge Luis Borges, Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
, Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph
, Truman Capote, House of Flowers
, Robert W. Chambers, The Yellow Sign
, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, The Ballad of Capn Pye
, F. Marion Crawford, For the Blood Is the Life
, Roald Dahl, Beware of the Dog
, Roald Dahl, Poison
. C. S. Forester, Hornblower and the Even Chance
, Jacques Futrelle, The Problem of Cell
, Robert Graves, The Shout
, Graham Greene, All but Empty
, Edmund Hamilton, The MonsterGod of Mamruth
, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Young Goodman Brown
, Johann Peter Hebel, An Unexpected Reunion
, George Hitchcock, An Invitation to the Hunt
, Robert E. Howard, Pigeons from Hell
, Washington Irving, The Spectre Bridegroom
, Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
, Shirley Jackson, The Summer People
, Franz Kafka, The Great Wall of China
, Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony
, Damon Knight, To Serve Man
, Fritz Leiber, Youre All Alone
, Maurice Level, A Madman
, Jack London, A Relic of the Pleistocene
, Jack London, To Build a Fire
, H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth
, Arthur Machen, The Novel of the White Powder
, Richard Matheson, Legion of Plotters
, Edgar Allan Poe, Berenice
, Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
, Frederik Pohl, The Tunnel under the World
, Aleksandr Pushkin, The Shot
, John Russell, The Fourth Man
, Saki, The Interlopers
. Sapper, The Idols Eye
, Mary Shelley, The Mortal Immortal
, Clark Ashton Smith, The Venus of Azombeii
, John Steinbeck, The Affair at, rue de M
, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Body Snatcher
, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Bottle Imp
, Frank R. Stockton, The Lady or the Tiger
, Hernando Téllez, Just Lather, Thats All
, Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
, Hugh Walpole, Mrs. Lunt
. Stanley Weyman, The Kings Stratagem
, Adolf Wenig, The Young Man Who Served in Hell Mostly unremarkable, but enough successful stories to keep me reading, Split into two sections: first, tales of terror, and second, tales of the supernatural, Which often ruins the suspense a little, as what section you're in determines whether the conclusion will be natural or supernatural, Also, given that I've been dipping in and out of this for six months, some of the earlier stories are a little fuzzy in my memory, but, as best I can, here are some of the ones that stuck out for me:

Richard Connell's 'The Most Dangerous Game' the original story of hunting humans for sport.
Chilling, thrilling, and entirely effective,

Geoffrey Household's 'Taboo' one of the stories where the format of the book works in its favour, Knowing that the conclusion to this is going to be all too human makes it significantly more unsettling,

F. Marion Crawford's 'The Screaming Skull' ludicrous, probably, and maybe a bit laughable these days, But delightful in its cheesy horror goodness nonetheless,

M. R. James' 'Casting the Runes' and 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' one of the few authors who gets more than one story, and I can see why James has the reputation he does.
A little silly, maybe, in their conclusions, but the sense of building atmosphere and menace in these two stories is unparalleled within this collection,

W. W. Jacobs' 'The Monkey's Paw' seems much older, like a folk story, or cautionary tale, Maybe it is. Either way, surprisingly chilling, in which getting what you ask for turns out to be worse than you could have imagined,

Arthur Machen's 'The Great God Pan' lengthy, the longest in the collection, but its mood is marvellous, distinct from the many urban settings of the other stories, strange and old and excellent.


H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Rats in the Walls' admittedly I'd read this one before, but it's still toptier Lovecraft, One of his rare stories that's not overlong and not hamstrung but underpinnings of racism, .