Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural

Algernon Blackwood
Spring Books

Tales include The Doll, Running Wolf, The Little Beggar, The Occupant of the Room, The Man Whom the Trees Loved, The Valley of the Beasts, The South Wind, The Man Who Was Milligan, The Trod, The Terror of the Twins, The Deferred Appointment, Accessory Before the Fact, The Glamour of the Snow, The House of the Past, The Decoy, The Tradition, The Touch of Pan, Entrance and Exit, The Pikestaffe Case, The Empty Sleeve, Violence, and The Lost Valley.

This is the second of these massive anthologies of Blackwood shorts that I've ploughed my way through.  Like the last one this book has lived next to my bed for several months and picked up on occasion when I was between reads or simply needed a fix of the great man, as such much of it's a little lost in my memory.  Looking at it now as I sit down to write this, the over-riding feeling I have of the book is one of nature, of the outdoors and the spirits of place.  A scan through the contents confirms this feeling, at least to a point, as included here are such quintessential Blackwoods as 'Running Wolf', 'The Man Who The Trees Loved', 'The Valley of the Beasts', 'The Touch of Pan' & 'The Lost Valley'.

Amongst the other 17 stories we find Blackwood in full flow.  The skin crawling menace of 'The Doll', the heart tugging poignancy of 'The Little Beggar' and the strangeness and dread of the painting belonging to 'The Man Who Was Milligan'.  Then we have the brief connect with other realms along 'The Trod' and 'Entrance and Exit' other 'people' as in 'The Glamour of Snow' or simply elsewhere in 'The Pikestaffe Case'.

Not everything here works terribly well, 'The Terror of Twins' feels entirely underwritten and 'The Deferred Appointment' is merely a fairly cliched ghost story with little point to it other than a vague impression that a dull life leads to a dull afterlife.  The un-acted upon psychic premonition afforded to the protagonist at the heart of 'Accessory Before the Fact' lends a promising story a rather flat resolution whereas 'The House of the Past' with it's dream imagery and it's psychotic break seem merely to be playing around with one of the great preoccupations (and new occupations) of the times.

The remaining three stories - 'The Decoy', 'The Tradition' and 'The Empty Sleeve' - have little to recommend them, each being fairly run of the mill stories of ghostly weirdness, loss and shapeshifting perfidy.

As with the previous volume a slightly mixed bag of treats but one that definitely erred to the better and with the knowledge that even second rate Blackwood is superior to many of his contemporaries makes this a fun collection to hunt down.

Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre

Algernon Blackwood
Spring Books

I've been slowly working my way through this sizeable hardback for a few months now reading a couple of stories and then shelving it for a week or two. I've mentioned here before about my long held dislike for reading anthologies of short stories which is a prejudice I've had to overcome over the last few years since starting to read more and more of these period strange stories.  Out of these anthologies the name Algernon Blackwood was one that held a particular appeal.  He has a name that seems expressly designed to be that of an author of weird fiction and his photos make him look like a magician.  He's a regular in anthologies so stories by him weren't hard to track down and the more I read the more I wanted to read and finding a copy of the 'Ancient Sorceries and Other Stories' Penguin paperback in a charity shop only helped stimulate this interest.  So, stumbling across this 400 page anthology was a happy day indeed.

Published in 1967 by Spring Books it contains 23 tales of the odd, the uncanny and the unnatural.  The stories in this volume are decidedly less spooky than the ones I've read previously although there is a strong undercurrent of the strange and the inexplicable but these are far more of the weird fiction genre than the ghostly.

Within its pages lie various pieces of treasure; a delightfully odd encounter for Blackwood's occult detective Dr. John Silence with a man who is 'A Victim of Higher Space', the strangely enchanting tale of a brother and sisters experience of a house filled with 'The Damned', a sacrificial tale involving the old gods of the sea in 'The Sea Fit', a tale about the transcendent powers of nature in 'The Golden Fly' and a rather lovely tale of cross generational help in 'The Other Wing'.

The collection is crammed full of enticing oddities all written with Blackwood's characteristic charm and readability.  Personally I have a marked fondness for the more ghostly side of his work but on the whole this collection turned out to be one of beauty and intriguing profundity.