Wordsworth Tales Of Mystery & The Supernatural - s&d

Despite the lolgoth design, I quite like the concept of this series. They're quite good at picking up neglected culty stuff that's been forgotten, instead of sticking to the obvious names (although sure enough they do feature collections of Poe, Lovecraft, Conan Doyle); lots of victorian stuff, but also stuff like The Devil Rides Out, which I'm reading right now - 30's brit satanist story, apparently used to be a household name according to the introduction - great fun, sort of an adventure romp with supernatural elements. They're also big at publishing stuff that's still widely known as popcult lore but not very widely read - they have some big omnibuses of Charlie Chan and Bulldog Drummond stories, for instance. Also: ghost stories by people not primairly known for horror lit (Kipling, Gaskell, Ambrose Bierce to a lesser extent.) And then there's just odd stuff, like an anthology of tales edited (but not written by!) H.P. Lovecraft.

I'm quite willing to believe that much of the stuff they're recovering is rightfully forgotten or marginalised (and of course the common thread between Chan, Drummond and The Devil Rides Out is that they all feature some rather dodgy racial caricatures - not that those are all that absent in more canonical stuff), but it's an interesting enterprise if nothing else. Opinions?

Also, what do people think of David Stuart Davies in general?

I like them: I've probably got about 10 of them by now--good for dipping into, rather than reading a whole collection right through, since they tend to lose their effect en masse. Especially liked the E Nesbitt (she of 'Railway Children' and 'Five Children and It'), Gertrude Atherton and May Sinclair ones. And Ambrose Bierce's short stories, ghostly and otherwise, are fucking awesome.

Warning: 'The Beetle' and 'Wagner the Werewolf', two novels in this set, are too long to really enjoy.

I love vintage weird fiction, and there is some great stuff in the series, including fairly obscure writers who you'd otherwise only be able to find in rare original editions or as limited small-press reprints. (Like I did!) Off the top of my ead, Caldecott's 'Fires Burn Blue' is wonderfully eccentric colonial ghost stories in the style of M.R. James, Gilchrist's "Night on the Moor' is loony Victorian decadence at its purplest. I wasn't particularly impressed with Davies' 'The Tangled Skein', but at £2.99, I'm not complaining.

I'd make more suggestions, but I'm having a hard time keeping up: Last time I looked, the Wordsworth site didn't have a separate listing.

Figured out the website - you can search by category. They're up to six pages by now, and the hit rate is very high. Standout has to be "The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder" by William Hope Hodgson, one of my absolute favorites. Carnacki is a tweedy, vaguely Holmesian figure who investigates supernatural mysteries, armed only with bizarre magical-scientific contraptions like the 'electric pentacle'. Hodgson was a major and acknowledged influence on HPL, and you can see this in some of the cosmic monstrosities Carnacki comes up against. 'The Hog' is astonishing.

Of the stuff I don't have, the two volumes of Robert E. Howard and the anthologies edited by Mark Valentine look particularly enticing. There was a lot more to Howard that what you might imagine from the Conan movies and comics, and Valentine is very active on the small press reprint scene - his involvement in anything is a very good sign.

Wow: there are a lot more out than when I last looked. I think I need to get me 'Dr Nikola', 'The Witch of Prague' and 'All Saints' Eve'.

On Soukesian's recommendation I today dived into Andrew Caldecott's 'Not Exactly Ghosts', which was lots and lots of fun.

Warning: 'The Beetle' and 'Wagner the Werewolf', two novels in this set, are too long to really enjoy.

I've heard people say Wagner The Werewolf is for genre nuts only; The Beetle has a pretty great rep though, I think it's gotten big-upped by Alan Moore or Jess Nevins or someone like that?

I'm sort of fascinated by David Stuart Davies and his ilk, people who write bootleg Sherlock Holmes stories or straight victorian horror, much as I am by people who write 40's style noir or Cthullhu mythos stories - sort've the literary equivalent of people doing garage rock or rockabilly in 2008.

'The Beetle' starts really well, but goes on waaaay too long. Jess Nevins said as much somewhere, and I should have listened to him.

the literary equivalent of people doing garage rock or rockabilly in 2008.

That's a great comparison!

"the literary equivalent of people doing garage rock or rockabilly in 2008" Well, what can I say. Just got in from seeing 'Les Bof!'

'The Beetle' is sub Fu Manchu bollocks. If it outsold Dracula, I reckon it's the old story about a watered-down fake outselling the real thing. Which probably makes me a weird-fiction rockist. Horrorist? Sign me up.

Thomas Ligotti is the classic example of someone writing weird fiction as if for submission to Weird Tales in the 1930's.

V disappointed with 'Carnacki'. I love 'House on the Borderland' but this is feeble, poorly devised and executed. Carnacki himself is both a nobody and an arse, and the hauntings are ridiculous and poorly explained. Fails to capture any traditional MR Jamesian fear, or otherwordly Lovecraftian terror.

Yeah, I couldn't be bothered finishing it. Shame: 'House on the Borderland' is such moodily hysterical fun.

Sorry you didn't rate "Carnacki" - I was about eleven when I read the stories first, which might have something to do with it. "Ridiculous and poorly explained" hit me as mysterious and surreal then, and still does. Does "House on the Borderland" really make that much more sense?

Still, at least you're not that much out of pocket - there are collectors out there who regularly pay three figure sums for weird fiction rarities of the same vintage purely on spec, and believe me, there's a hell of a lot worse out there.

gateway of the monster is maybe my favourite ghost story

Not even the best tale of a horrid hand imo. Said accolade goes to The Beast with Five Fingers, maybe my favourite outside of MR James.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15143/15143-h/15143-h.htm#Beast

Author WF Harvey has his own Wordsworth collection apparently. Have found one other story online, this brief curio which possibly over implies and under justifies its ending: http://www.annexed.net/box/augustheat/index.html

From Gateway of the Monster: "The ring, I may say, was brought home by one of the Crusaders, under very peculiar circumstances; but the story is too long to go into here." - strikes me as pretty weak handwaving. I guess you might say MR James doesn't explain his famous whistle any better, but he has in general a much stronger and more scholarly sense of background detail.

nah man naaah that's our character is that imo its delightful

thks for links obv

cmere is it total disgrace then to state that the trashier appeal of carnacki as offered appeals more to me than the stately pacing of mr James because being honest I've never yet stayed awake to get to the scary parts in any attempt at the latter

no no... "a much stronger and more scholarly sense of background detail" - sounds like awful rot what was i thinking

stately pacing in a 20 page story is relative, man

I'm just delighted to get the sleep tbph