Richard Wells (2)

Information - this anthology contains the following short stories:
-Laura Silver Bell by Sheridan Le Fanu
-Man-Size in Marble by Edith Nesbit
-Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson
-The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy
-Pallinghurst Barrow by Grant Allen
-Devil of the Marsh by H. B. Marriott-Watson
-The Sin-Eater by Fiona Macleod
-The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen
-The Black Reaper by Bernard Capes
-The Ash-Tree by M. R. James
-Out of the Sea by A. C. Benson
-Gavon's Eve by E. F. Benson
-A Witch-Burning by Mrs Baillie Reynolds
-The Music on the Hill by Saki
-The Tarn of Sacrifice by Algernon Blackwood
-How Pan Came to Little Ingleton by Margery Lawrence
-All Hallows by Walter de la Mare
-Randalls Round by Eleanor Scott
-The First Sheaf by H. R. Wakefield
-CWM Garon by L. T. C. Rolt
-The Summer People by Shirley Jackson
-The Lady on the Grey by John Collier
-Bind Your Hair by Robert Aickman… (más)

A handsomely designed and solid tome, this presents a couple of dozen short stories in chronological order by first publication.

The subtitle says 'A Folk Horror Analogy', and that description is kind of loose, since some of the tales are more folky than others, and a few are dubiously horrific at all.

The authors represented range from the generically famous (RL Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, E Nesbit [!], Saki, Walter de la Mare) through the obligatory for this subject matter (MR James, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson) to names unfamiliar (at least, to me).

Most are very English in style and setting (and for this reason, the very American Jackson feels a bit of an outlier, though her inclusion is an obvious 'big name' draw).

Throughout, the general themes are of 'modern/town/Christian' folk deposited in a rural setting, stumbling out of the comfortable, predictable, but perhaps somewhat unexciting worlds of the familiar into other, older, weirder goings-on that alternately attract, bamboozle, or terrify them.

Sometimes (more often in the older stories) these lead to a denouement in which the protagonist either witnesses or is drawn into a specific bizarre happening, but in others the point seems to be more to leave the reader with a general sense of foreboding or unease without any specific event at the conclusion. Personally, I found those less satisfying (in a 'Yes, but what of it?' kind of way), but your mileage may vary.… (más)