ADVANCED SEARCH  

Support WWEnd

WWEnd Blog

WWEnd BookTrackr™

Synopsis

From early on, American literature has teemed with tales of horror, of hauntings, of terrifying obsessions and gruesome incursions, of the uncanny ways in which ordinary reality can be breached and subverted by the unknown and the irrational. As this pathbreaking two-volume anthology demonstrates, it is a tradition with many unexpected detours and hidden chambers, and one that continues to evolve, finding new forms and new themes as it explores the bad dreams that lurk around the edges-if not in the unacknowledged heart--of the everyday. Peter Straub, one of today's masters of horror and fantasy, offers an authoritative and diverse gathering of stories calculated to unsettle and delight.

This first volume surveys a century and a half of American fantastic storytelling, revealing in its 44 stories an array of recurring themes: trance states, sleepwalking, mesmerism, obsession, possession, madness, exotic curses, evil atmospheres. In the tales of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, the bright prospects of the New World face an uneasy reckoning with the forces of darkness. In the ghost-haunted Victorian and Edwardian eras, writers including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Ambrose Bierce explore ever more refined varieties of spectral invasion and disintegrating selfhood.

In the twentieth century, with the arrival of the era of the pulps, the fantastic took on more monstrous and horrific forms at the hands of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other classic contributors to Weird Tales. Here are works by acknowledged masters such as Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Conrad Aiken, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with surprising discoveries like Ralph Adams Cram's "The Dead Valley," Emma Francis Dawson's "An Itinerant House," and Julian Hawthorne's "Absolute Evil." American Fantastic Tales offers an unforgettable ride through strange and visionary realms.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Peter Straub
• Somnambulism: A Fragment - (1784) - shortfiction by Charles Brockden Brown
• The Adventure of the German Student - (1824) - shortstory by Washington Irving
• Berenice - (1835) - shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of Berenice--A Tale)
• Young Goodman Brown - (1835) - shortstory by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Tartarus of Maids - (1855) - shortstory by Herman Melville
• What Was It? A Mystery - (1859) - shortstory by Fitz-James O'Brien
• The Legend of Monte del Diablo - (1863) - shortstory by Bret Harte
• The Moonstone Mass - (1868) - shortstory by Harriet Prescott Spofford
• His Unconquerable Enemy - (1889) - shortstory by W. C. Morrow
• In Dark New England Days - (1890) - shortstory by Sarah Orne Jewett
• The Yellow Wall Paper - (1892) - shortstory by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Black Dog - (1892) - shortstory by Stephen Crane
• Ma'ame Pélagie - (1893) - shortstory by Kate Chopin
• Thurlow's Christmas Story - (1894) - shortstory by John Kendrick Bangs
• The Repairer of Reputations - (1895) - novelette by Robert W. Chambers
• The Dead Valley - (1895) - shortstory by Ralph Adams Cram
• The Little Room - (1895) - shortstory by Madeline Yale Wynne
• The Striding Place - (1896) - shortstory by Gertrude Atherton
• An Itinerant House - (1897) - shortstory by Emma Frances Dawson
• Luella Miller - (1902) - shortstory by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• Grettir at Thorhall-stead - (1903) - shortstory by Frank Norris
• Yuki-Onna - (1904) - shortstory by Lafcadio Hearn
• For the Blood Is the Life - (1905) - shortstory by F. Marion Crawford
• The Moonlit Road - (1907) - shortstory by Ambrose Bierce
• Lukundoo - (1907) - shortstory by Edward Lucas White
• The Shell of Sense - (1908) - shortstory by Olivia Howard Dunbar
• The Jolly Corner - (1908) - novelette by Henry James
• Golden Baby - (1910) - shortstory by Alice Brown
• Afterward - (1910) - novelette by Edith Wharton
• Consequences - (1915) - shortstory by Willa Cather
• The Shadowy Third - (1916) - novelette by Ellen Glasgow
• Absolute Evil - (1918) - novelette by Julian Hawthorne
• Unseen--Unfeared - (1919) - shortstory by Francis Stevens
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - (1922) - novelette by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Curse of Everard Maundy - (1927) - novelette by Seabury Quinn
• The King of the Cats - (1929) - shortstory by Stephen Vincent Benét
• The Jelly-Fish - (1929) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• Mr. Arcularis - (1931) - novelette by Conrad Aiken
• The Black Stone - (1931) - shortstory by Robert E. Howard
• Passing of a God - (1931) - shortstory by Henry S. Whitehead
• The Panelled Room - (1933) - shortstory by August Derleth
• The Thing on the Doorstep - (1937) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• Genius Loci - (1933) - shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
• The Cloak - (1939) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• Biographical Notes - essay by uncredited
• Note on the Texts - essay by uncredited
• Notes - essay by uncredited

Excerpt

No excerpt currently exists for this novel.

Reviews

There are currently no reviews for this novel. Be the first to submit one! You must be logged in to submit a review in the BookTrackr section above.

Images

No alternate cover images currently exist for this novel.