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Cover

Horror Stories

Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson

Edited by Darryl Jones

25 October 2018

ISBN: 9780199685448

560 pages
Paperback
196x129mm

In Stock

Oxford World's Classics

Price: £8.99

This anthology brings together 29 of the greatest horror stories from the British, Irish, American, and European traditions through the long 19th century. It ranges widely across diverse sub-genres including the supernatural, psychological and tales of the uncanny, and features established classics as well as little-known works.

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Description

This anthology brings together 29 of the greatest horror stories from the British, Irish, American, and European traditions through the long 19th century. It ranges widely across diverse sub-genres including the supernatural, psychological and tales of the uncanny, and features established classics as well as little-known works.

  • A unique and wide-ranging anthology of horror fiction from the Victorian and Edwardian periods, that embraces the diversity of the genre to showcase its terrifying achievements.
  • Includes all horror types—from supernatural tales and ghost stories, to scientific, psychological, and colonial horror—and writers from the British, Irish, European, and American traditions.
  • A lively and accessible Introduction discusses horror's appeal and often controversial nature, its particular attraction to nineteenth-century writers and readers as a way of articulating cultural preoccupations and anxieties, and the importance of the periodical market to the history of the genre.
  • Includes comprehensive notes with brief accounts of the writers' lives and careers, full chronology, and select bibliography.

About the Author(s)

Edited by Darryl Jones, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity College Dublin

Darryl Jones has taught at Trinity College Dublin since 1994. Prior to this he taught in the University of Lodz, Poland. He has held Visiting Professorships at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Babes Bolyai University, Cluj, Transylvania, and Tongji University, Shanghai. He is the author or editor of twelve books, including Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film (Arnold/OUP 2002), It Came From the 1950s!: Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties (with Elizabeth McCarthy and Bernice M. Murphy, Palgrave Macmillan 2011), and for Oxford World's Classics, M. R. James, Collected Ghost Stories (OUP, 2011, 2013), Arthur Conan Doyle's Gothic Tales (2016), and H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (2017) and The Island of Doctor Moreau (2017).

Table of Contents

    Introduction
    Note on the Text
    Select Bibliography
    Chronology
    E.T.A. HOFFMANN, The Sandman
    WILLIAM MAGINN, The Man in the Bell
    JAMES HOGG, George Dobson's Expedition to Hell
    HONORÉ DE BALZAC, La Grande Bretêche
    EDGAR ALLAN POE, Berenice
    SHERIDAN LE FANU, Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
    NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Birth-Mark
    HERMAN MELVILLE, The Tartarus of Maids
    FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN, What Was It?
    CHARLES DICKENS, No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal-Man
    ÉMILE ZOLA, The Death of Olivier Bécaille
    RONALD ROSS, The Vivisector Vivisected
    ROBERT-LOUIS STEVENSON, The Body-Snatcher
    RUDYARD KIPLING, The Mark of the Beast
    AMBROSE BIERCE, Chickamauga
    CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN,The Yellow Wall Paper
    ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Case of Lady Sannox
    BRAM STOKER, The Squaw
    ROBERT W. CHAMBERS, The Repairer of Reputations
    ARTHUR MACHEN, Novel of the White Powder
    RICHARD MARSH, The Adventure of Lady Wishaw's Hand
    W. W. JACOBS, The Monkey's Paw
    MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN, Luella Miller
    M. R. JAMES, Count Magnus
    FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD, For the Blood is the Life
    ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, The Wendigo
    W. F. HARVEY, August Heat
    E. F. BENSON, The Room in the Tower
    WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON, The Derelict
    Explanatory Notes

Reviews

"Horror Stories is a very impressive collection. It includes a number of tales that anyone who has a passionate interest in horror should have on their bookshelf, with staple titles known across horror aficionados as well as some lesser known works from some very prolific authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, and E.F. Benson. With a very thorough and analytical introduction from Darryl Jones, you see the origins of these stories and the enduring influence they have had on the genre. You will not be disappointed." - Nick Blackshaw, Starburst

"Darryl Jones has crafted a fantastic compilation; there are no fillers, all killers (literally in many cases) ... An added bonus with this collection is the detailed introduction by Jones, providing historical context, and the extensive explanatory notes at the end ... Those that have not dared venture into classic horror should buy this collection immediately, and they'll be hooked and buying coffins filled with Poe and M.R. James anthologies before Christmas." - John Upton, Gore in the Store

"Horror Stories is no common schlock-fest. Darryl Jones has skilfully gathered the most beautifully written, unsettling stories in the English language." - Vulpes Libris, Moira Briggs

"a beautiful collection of nineteenth-century horror with enough set pieces to educate the novice and enough curiosities to delight the connoisseur." - Kirsty Jane McCluskey, Books of the year 2014, Tablet

"It is a beautifully finished book that you just want to take care of ... The content is as good as the production." - Lizzi Thomasson, These Little Words

"[A] superb collection of short fiction" - John Connolly, Irish Times

"As well as the general introduction, which provides a useful history of horror from its Gothic origins through a long nineteeth century, each story in the collection is accompanied by a set of notes explaining when and where it was published as well as providing the usual glosses for unfamiliar terms. This contextual emphasis on the nineteeth century periodicals where the readers would first have encounted the work of a writer such as Dickens is particularly illuminating for those interested in horror stories as a meeting of form and content ... Darryl Jone's anthology is a highly accessible guide to the major developments in horror writing during the nineteeth century, and an intriguing reminder that every aspect of Western societies' push for advancement during this period, from industrialization to colonial expansion, produced its own nightmares in the collective unconscious." - Sophie Devlin, The Times Literary Supplement

"As well as the general introduction, which provides a useful history of horror from its Gothic origins through a long nineteenth century, each story in this collection is accompanied by a set of notes explaining when and where it was published as well as providing the usual glosses for unfamiliar terms. Darryl Jones's anthology is a highly accessible guide to the major developments in horror writing during the nineteenth century." - Sophie Devlin, Times Literary Supplement

"Editing an anthology of this sort is a delicate balancing act ... Horror Stories does a good job here, and offers a bracing mixture of the classic but familiar and fresher material. This broad-ranging and well-researched anthology of horror is full of gruesome things: haunting, possession, revenge, witchcraft, vampires, crime even disease and madness." - Nicholas Daly, Guardian

"This compendium of ghoulish stories from 1816-1912 has a bit of everything. All are fab for reading aloud." - Lizzy Dening, Grazia

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