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Incredible Adventures
This collection of five novellas ranks among Blackwood's finest works. Not only does it present weird scenarios of extraordinary richness and bizarrerie--the "regeneration" of a blasé English nobleman by means of pagan rituals on a mountaintop; a dismal house haunted by the souls of those whom its fanatical owner condemned to hell; the sapping of a man's spirit as he performs an ancient ceremony in the sands of Egypt--but also probes the characters' reactions to the bizarre with unfailing subtlety and acuteness. The result is a landmark in the history of weird fiction. With an introduction by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on supernatural literature.
Contents:
- The Regeneration of Lord Ernie
- The Sacrifice
- The Damned
- A Descent Into Egypt
- Wayfarers.
Contents:
- The Regeneration of Lord Ernie
- The Sacrifice
- The Damned
- A Descent Into Egypt
- Wayfarers.
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1914
13 people are currently reading
278 people want to read
About the author
Algernon Blackwood
1,260 books1,143 followersAlgernon Henry Blackwood (1869–1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".
Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of northwest Kent) and educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas." Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, and, throughout his adult life, an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was very successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this.
H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Blackwood: "He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere." His powerful story "The Willows," which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only "foremost of all" Blackwood's tales but the best "weird tale" of all time.
Among his thirty-odd books, Blackwood wrote a series of stories and short novels published as John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (1908), which featured a "psychic detective" who combined the skills of a Sherlock Holmes and a psychic medium. Blackwood also wrote light fantasy and juvenile books.
Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of northwest Kent) and educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas." Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, and, throughout his adult life, an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was very successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this.
H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Blackwood: "He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere." His powerful story "The Willows," which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only "foremost of all" Blackwood's tales but the best "weird tale" of all time.
Among his thirty-odd books, Blackwood wrote a series of stories and short novels published as John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (1908), which featured a "psychic detective" who combined the skills of a Sherlock Holmes and a psychic medium. Blackwood also wrote light fantasy and juvenile books.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
January 18, 2013
It's been just about long enough to allow myself the pleasure of reading another book by the master of numinous horror, Algernon Blackwood. I picked this book as it is (according to S.T. Joshi) Blackwood's last great collection and also because I hadn't read any of the stories previously.
There's something about his writing that really uplifts me, and never fails to evoke an unsettling atmosphere and mood. Yes, he is very wordy, and some may feel like he belabours the point but in fact it is his technique for effecting gradual and subtle shifts in the narrative and the protagonist's state of mind. His prose style reads easily to modern ears though does feel old fashioned.
There's only actually five stories in this collection, four of which I would actually call novellas more than short stories. They generally share a common theme (that extends throughout his work) of spiritual (re)discovery and Blackwood obviously felt that people of his age had generally lost touch with their more elemental, spiritual natures. He was a theist without holding to any particular creed or doctrine and one gets the impression that he held the rationalist/atheist in equally as low regard as the dogmatic, proselytizing zealot.
"The Regeneration of Lord Ernie" was the opening tale about a professor taking a young heir around the world in order to help him find himself and lose his apathy. Nothing seems to have any impact until they stumble upon some strange cult in the mountains of France that worship the elemental forces of air and fire.
But my favourite of the collection was definitely "The Damned". A haunted house story with a twist. Blackwood masterfully builds up tension and atmosphere in this story and is only let down by too forcefully (I felt) hammering home his world view once again at the end.
Well, that's my fix done for this year...until next time.
There's something about his writing that really uplifts me, and never fails to evoke an unsettling atmosphere and mood. Yes, he is very wordy, and some may feel like he belabours the point but in fact it is his technique for effecting gradual and subtle shifts in the narrative and the protagonist's state of mind. His prose style reads easily to modern ears though does feel old fashioned.
There's only actually five stories in this collection, four of which I would actually call novellas more than short stories. They generally share a common theme (that extends throughout his work) of spiritual (re)discovery and Blackwood obviously felt that people of his age had generally lost touch with their more elemental, spiritual natures. He was a theist without holding to any particular creed or doctrine and one gets the impression that he held the rationalist/atheist in equally as low regard as the dogmatic, proselytizing zealot.
"The Regeneration of Lord Ernie" was the opening tale about a professor taking a young heir around the world in order to help him find himself and lose his apathy. Nothing seems to have any impact until they stumble upon some strange cult in the mountains of France that worship the elemental forces of air and fire.
But my favourite of the collection was definitely "The Damned". A haunted house story with a twist. Blackwood masterfully builds up tension and atmosphere in this story and is only let down by too forcefully (I felt) hammering home his world view once again at the end.
Well, that's my fix done for this year...until next time.
July 2, 2013
These tales have great moments, but they also reveal Blackwood at his most prolix. Blackwood's thoroughness in viewing a hitherto unknown phenomenon from several different vantage points reaches its extreme in this book, and only "The Damned" survives what E. F. Bleiler has referred to as "word-choked development". This is a pity, because "A Descent into Egypt" has moments of grandeur, wonder, and terror that make me wish Blackwood had not spent so much time making this reader feel as if the sands of Egypt were passing before his eyes grain by grain by grain.
Read all of the stories in Dover's BEST GHOST STORIES OF ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, then go on to other compilations such as TALES OF THE UNCANNY AND SUPERNATURAL before tackling this one. The book has its rewards, but Blackwood requires a good deal of patience from his reader in order to capture them.
LATER - Having reread this collection recently, I find that, although my assessment of the majority of the book's contents remains unchanged, I now find the first novelette, "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie" to be free of the repetitiveness and sheer longwindedness that marred "A Descent into Egypt" in particular. What a remarkable work this is. The climax on the ridge with its orgiastic dance of wind and fire, whether intentional or not, seems to evoke Stravinsky's RITE OF SPRING, a work premiered a mere year before this collection was published.
Read all of the stories in Dover's BEST GHOST STORIES OF ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, then go on to other compilations such as TALES OF THE UNCANNY AND SUPERNATURAL before tackling this one. The book has its rewards, but Blackwood requires a good deal of patience from his reader in order to capture them.
LATER - Having reread this collection recently, I find that, although my assessment of the majority of the book's contents remains unchanged, I now find the first novelette, "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie" to be free of the repetitiveness and sheer longwindedness that marred "A Descent into Egypt" in particular. What a remarkable work this is. The climax on the ridge with its orgiastic dance of wind and fire, whether intentional or not, seems to evoke Stravinsky's RITE OF SPRING, a work premiered a mere year before this collection was published.
August 19, 2011
This collection was first released in book form in 1914, and is comprised of three novellas and two short stories. The literary critic and scholar S.T. Joshi has called this book "perhaps the greatest weird collection of all time," and while I do not pretend to be well read enough to concur in that evaluation, I will say that the book is beautifully written...and certainly weird, in Blackwood's best manner. The five pieces in "Incredible Adventures" are almost impossible to categorize. They're not exactly horror or fantasy tales, but they all share one thing in common: In all of them, Algernon Blackwood--lover of Nature (with a capital "N") and ever one to seek for the ultimate reality behind the surfaces of what we seem to know--gives us characters who are bettered for their glimpses behind "reality's" curtain. This is not an easy book to write about, nor are the stories in it by any means light reading. Blackwood was trying to elucidate important points with these tales; to help readers understand their true relation to Nature, and time and space. Sounds like heavy going, I know, but for all lovers of finely crafted albeit unusual tales, this book will be a godsend.
The collection starts off with a bang with one of the novellas, "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie." In this tale, a tutor tries to breathe some much-needed spirit into his young ward by exposing him to a pagan ceremony in the Jura Mountains. But things get a little out of control in this very atmospheric tale.
Next up is "The Sacrifice," one of the shorter pieces, in which a mountaineer who has just undergone some severe life setbacks goes climbing. This story is the most symbolic, surrealistic and ambiguous of the bunch. I don't want to ruin the tale for any prospective readers, so just let me say that I have never read a story quite like it.
"The Damned" is next up, and it is the longest novella in the collection. At first glance a traditional haunted-house story, the tale is soon revealed to go much deeper than that. As the author tells us repeatedly, "nothing happens" in this tale per se; atmosphere is everything, and nobody conveys atmosphere better than Blackwood (as a reading of his classic tale "The Willows" will surely demonstrate). But it really is remarkable how Blackwood maintains and magnifies this ominous atmosphere over the length of this novella; a really bravura performance.
The last of the three long tales, "A Descent Into Egypt," immediately follows. In this tale, a group of men in modern-day Egypt find themselves being helplessly drawn back in time (spiritually, at least) by the glamour of that ancient land. This tale just keeps getting weirder and weirder. It is hallucinatory in the extreme; so much so that it makes me wonder why Blackwood was never championed in the 1960s by the same hippie college kids who took so wholeheartedly to Carlos Castaneda and P.K. Dick. Like Dick, Blackwood was very concerned with the reality that underlies our so-called reality. In this Egyptian tale, the land and time of the ancients is the reality; the present day is only the skin on the surface. This really is some amazing work.
The book ends on a lovely note with the short story entitled "Wayfarers." Here, a man awakens after an auto accident and finds himself in bed a full hundred years earlier! It is a tale of eternal love and reincarnation; the type of tale that H. Rider Haggard would probably have loved, and another beautifully written winner. I should add here that these stories are probably best read and savored slowly, both for their exquisite atmospheres as well as for their deeper meanings. For those readers who like to zip through their books, my advice here would be to SLOW DOWN! Savor the language that Blackwood commands, and lines such as this one: "The stars turned a shade less brilliant, a softness in them as of human eyes that say farewell." You can't sprint through a botanical garden and expect to appreciate all the wonders therein!
I should also mention that, while I am grateful to Stark House for making this classic, long-out-of-print collection available again, I deplore the sloppiness with which this edition has been put together. I have never read a book with more typographical errors of every description. Besides the run-of-the-mill typos, hyphens and M dashes are routinely intermixed throughout; margins are fouled up; words are omitted from sentences; changes in font size occur; British pound symbols are substituted for the letter "f"; words are repeated; boldface words appear for no reason; accent marks are at times used for apostrophes; and on and on. I myself am a copy editor and proofreader, and find it amazing that this edition was proofed at all. And yet, uncommonly enough, a credit for the proofreader is given at the front of the book!!! If it were me, I would have had my name deleted, out of professional pride! Stark House has a lot of chutzpah charging $17 for this remarkably messy work. Still, the book IS a collection of wonders, and Blackwood's vision does shine through. But potential readers would be well advised to do themselves a favor and splurge for an older copy!
The collection starts off with a bang with one of the novellas, "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie." In this tale, a tutor tries to breathe some much-needed spirit into his young ward by exposing him to a pagan ceremony in the Jura Mountains. But things get a little out of control in this very atmospheric tale.
Next up is "The Sacrifice," one of the shorter pieces, in which a mountaineer who has just undergone some severe life setbacks goes climbing. This story is the most symbolic, surrealistic and ambiguous of the bunch. I don't want to ruin the tale for any prospective readers, so just let me say that I have never read a story quite like it.
"The Damned" is next up, and it is the longest novella in the collection. At first glance a traditional haunted-house story, the tale is soon revealed to go much deeper than that. As the author tells us repeatedly, "nothing happens" in this tale per se; atmosphere is everything, and nobody conveys atmosphere better than Blackwood (as a reading of his classic tale "The Willows" will surely demonstrate). But it really is remarkable how Blackwood maintains and magnifies this ominous atmosphere over the length of this novella; a really bravura performance.
The last of the three long tales, "A Descent Into Egypt," immediately follows. In this tale, a group of men in modern-day Egypt find themselves being helplessly drawn back in time (spiritually, at least) by the glamour of that ancient land. This tale just keeps getting weirder and weirder. It is hallucinatory in the extreme; so much so that it makes me wonder why Blackwood was never championed in the 1960s by the same hippie college kids who took so wholeheartedly to Carlos Castaneda and P.K. Dick. Like Dick, Blackwood was very concerned with the reality that underlies our so-called reality. In this Egyptian tale, the land and time of the ancients is the reality; the present day is only the skin on the surface. This really is some amazing work.
The book ends on a lovely note with the short story entitled "Wayfarers." Here, a man awakens after an auto accident and finds himself in bed a full hundred years earlier! It is a tale of eternal love and reincarnation; the type of tale that H. Rider Haggard would probably have loved, and another beautifully written winner. I should add here that these stories are probably best read and savored slowly, both for their exquisite atmospheres as well as for their deeper meanings. For those readers who like to zip through their books, my advice here would be to SLOW DOWN! Savor the language that Blackwood commands, and lines such as this one: "The stars turned a shade less brilliant, a softness in them as of human eyes that say farewell." You can't sprint through a botanical garden and expect to appreciate all the wonders therein!
I should also mention that, while I am grateful to Stark House for making this classic, long-out-of-print collection available again, I deplore the sloppiness with which this edition has been put together. I have never read a book with more typographical errors of every description. Besides the run-of-the-mill typos, hyphens and M dashes are routinely intermixed throughout; margins are fouled up; words are omitted from sentences; changes in font size occur; British pound symbols are substituted for the letter "f"; words are repeated; boldface words appear for no reason; accent marks are at times used for apostrophes; and on and on. I myself am a copy editor and proofreader, and find it amazing that this edition was proofed at all. And yet, uncommonly enough, a credit for the proofreader is given at the front of the book!!! If it were me, I would have had my name deleted, out of professional pride! Stark House has a lot of chutzpah charging $17 for this remarkably messy work. Still, the book IS a collection of wonders, and Blackwood's vision does shine through. But potential readers would be well advised to do themselves a favor and splurge for an older copy!
July 23, 2023
3.43⭐
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie 3.4⭐
The Sacrifice 3⭐
The Damned 3.5⭐
A Descent Into Egypt 3.25⭐
Wayfarers 4⭐
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie 3.4⭐
The Sacrifice 3⭐
The Damned 3.5⭐
A Descent Into Egypt 3.25⭐
Wayfarers 4⭐
February 22, 2016
Blackwood was highly regarded by H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft states he had a great impact on his writing and storytelling style. I can tell because I don't Like Lovecraft's writing and don't care for the stories that influenced him. Not recommended unless you are a huge fan of Lovecraft.
Want to read
May 27, 2024Contains the stories:
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie
"The Sacrifice"
The Damned
A Descent into Egypt
"Wayfarers"
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie
"The Sacrifice"
The Damned
A Descent into Egypt
"Wayfarers"
March 25, 2025
Zowel Lovecraft-kenner S.T. Joshi als Lovecraft zelf zagen/zien de bundel ‘Incredible Adventures’ van Algernon als de meest pure vorm van weird fiction, en roemen het daarvoor. Maar ik moet liefhebbers van weird fiction waarschuwen: het wordt door veel lezers niet geheel onterecht als extreem langdradig of anders als moelijk leesbaar gezien. De verhalen beginnen vaak goed leesbaar met een mooie setting voor een goed horrorverhaal, maar uiteindelijk lijkt het te verzanden in een soort lsd-trip die maar doorgaat en doorgaat. Maar zo’n lezing doet het boek geen recht.
Het boek bestaat eigenlijk uit vier novelles en één korter verhaal. In het eerste verhaal, ‘The Regeneration of Lord Ernie’ is al meteen duidelijk van wie Lovecraft het aspect van het ‘onuitspreekbare’ heeft overgenomen, een zo belangrijk onderdeel van weird fiction, al gebruikt Blackwood daar andere woorden voor: ‘The world he moved in (…) belonged to conditions too utterly remote for reason to recover a single clue to their intelligible reconstruction.’
Maar vooral in het derde en tevens langste verhaal, ‘The Damned’, blijkt dat het niet (alleen) gaat om de Lovecraftiaanse horror en angst voor het onbekende (bij Lovecraft door zijn xenofobie ingegeven), maar om iets dat ik misschien het beste kan omschrijven als een neoromantische voorloper van het existentialisme. Hieronder drie fragmenten waarin ik het woord ‘happen’ zelf in kapitalen heb gezet:
‘‘That’s what is so ugly about it – that nothing ever HAPPENS,’ she said. ‘There is this endless anticipation – always on the dry edge of a result that never materialises. It is torture.’’
‘Things that HAPPEN in the night always seem exaggerated and distorted when the sun shines brightly next morning.’
‘It remains, therefore, not a story but a history. Nothing HAPPENED.’
De ellenlange bespiegelingen van de ik-vertellers in de verhalen maken op mij de indruk dat het eigenlijk gaat om een existentialistische worsteling van de schrijver, Blackwood zelf. Dat wat niet ‘gebeurt’ (of alleen in dromen en dergelijke) is dat wat Blackwood zoekt in zijn (noem het spirituele) zoektocht. Ergens lijkt het of hij weet dat het er is, maar het niet kan vinden. Anders dan de ‘weird fiction’-schrijver Arthur Machen, die dit zoeken ‘de graal’ noemde en het verbond met zijn christelijke geloof, was Blackwood niet gelovig. Het is duidelijk dat Blackwoods spirituele/existentialistische gedachten eerder passen in een type neoromantiek in dit fragment uit het vierde verhaal (kapitalen weer door mij):
‘And there hid in it something of uneasiness that was inexplicable; AWE, a hint of cold eternity, a touch of something unchanging and terrific, something SUBLIME made lovely yet unearthly with shadowy TIME AND DISTANCE.’
De verhalen zijn, net als die in de neoromantiek, duidelijk escapistisch. De personages vluchten, zwerven en zoeken echter niet in letterlijke verre plaatsen, maar eerder in een soort spirituele andere dimensies.
Al is Blackwoods vorm van ‘weird fiction’ dus zeker niet gelijk aan die van Lovecraft, toch is er wel vaak een gevoel van dreiging aanwezig, de angst om jezelf ‘te verliezen’ in een wereld die te groots en ongrijpbaar is. Het zijn dit soort momenten waarin duidelijk wordt dat Blackwood voor Lovecraft zo belangrijk was, zoals in het volgende fragment uit het voornoemde verhaal (dat me ook doet denken aan het thema van het tweede deel van Michael Endes Die unendliche Geschichte):
‘The soul, indeed, could ‘choose its dwelling place; but to live elsewhere completely was the choice of madness, and to live divorced from all the sweet wholesome business of To-day involved an exile that was worse than madness. It was death.’
Vond ik het een goed boek? Het was in elk geval interessant, maar ‘lekker lezen’ was het niet echt. Elk verhaal is in feite hetzelfde opgebouwd en qua inhoud behoorlijk gelijk aan elkaar – wat het ‘langdradige’ effect alleen maar versterkt. Steeds komen de hoofdpersonages in een situatie die ervoor zorgt dat in elk geval één van hen wordt meegesleurd door bovengenoemd ‘elsewhere’. Het lezen van de verhalen voelt als een storm die woedt in het hoofd van de schrijver; het leest alsof Blackwood zijn eigen existentialistische worsteling probeert te bezweren door het te proberen in woorden te vatten, iets wat onmogelijk lijkt te zijn.
Het boek bestaat eigenlijk uit vier novelles en één korter verhaal. In het eerste verhaal, ‘The Regeneration of Lord Ernie’ is al meteen duidelijk van wie Lovecraft het aspect van het ‘onuitspreekbare’ heeft overgenomen, een zo belangrijk onderdeel van weird fiction, al gebruikt Blackwood daar andere woorden voor: ‘The world he moved in (…) belonged to conditions too utterly remote for reason to recover a single clue to their intelligible reconstruction.’
Maar vooral in het derde en tevens langste verhaal, ‘The Damned’, blijkt dat het niet (alleen) gaat om de Lovecraftiaanse horror en angst voor het onbekende (bij Lovecraft door zijn xenofobie ingegeven), maar om iets dat ik misschien het beste kan omschrijven als een neoromantische voorloper van het existentialisme. Hieronder drie fragmenten waarin ik het woord ‘happen’ zelf in kapitalen heb gezet:
‘‘That’s what is so ugly about it – that nothing ever HAPPENS,’ she said. ‘There is this endless anticipation – always on the dry edge of a result that never materialises. It is torture.’’
‘Things that HAPPEN in the night always seem exaggerated and distorted when the sun shines brightly next morning.’
‘It remains, therefore, not a story but a history. Nothing HAPPENED.’
De ellenlange bespiegelingen van de ik-vertellers in de verhalen maken op mij de indruk dat het eigenlijk gaat om een existentialistische worsteling van de schrijver, Blackwood zelf. Dat wat niet ‘gebeurt’ (of alleen in dromen en dergelijke) is dat wat Blackwood zoekt in zijn (noem het spirituele) zoektocht. Ergens lijkt het of hij weet dat het er is, maar het niet kan vinden. Anders dan de ‘weird fiction’-schrijver Arthur Machen, die dit zoeken ‘de graal’ noemde en het verbond met zijn christelijke geloof, was Blackwood niet gelovig. Het is duidelijk dat Blackwoods spirituele/existentialistische gedachten eerder passen in een type neoromantiek in dit fragment uit het vierde verhaal (kapitalen weer door mij):
‘And there hid in it something of uneasiness that was inexplicable; AWE, a hint of cold eternity, a touch of something unchanging and terrific, something SUBLIME made lovely yet unearthly with shadowy TIME AND DISTANCE.’
De verhalen zijn, net als die in de neoromantiek, duidelijk escapistisch. De personages vluchten, zwerven en zoeken echter niet in letterlijke verre plaatsen, maar eerder in een soort spirituele andere dimensies.
Al is Blackwoods vorm van ‘weird fiction’ dus zeker niet gelijk aan die van Lovecraft, toch is er wel vaak een gevoel van dreiging aanwezig, de angst om jezelf ‘te verliezen’ in een wereld die te groots en ongrijpbaar is. Het zijn dit soort momenten waarin duidelijk wordt dat Blackwood voor Lovecraft zo belangrijk was, zoals in het volgende fragment uit het voornoemde verhaal (dat me ook doet denken aan het thema van het tweede deel van Michael Endes Die unendliche Geschichte):
‘The soul, indeed, could ‘choose its dwelling place; but to live elsewhere completely was the choice of madness, and to live divorced from all the sweet wholesome business of To-day involved an exile that was worse than madness. It was death.’
Vond ik het een goed boek? Het was in elk geval interessant, maar ‘lekker lezen’ was het niet echt. Elk verhaal is in feite hetzelfde opgebouwd en qua inhoud behoorlijk gelijk aan elkaar – wat het ‘langdradige’ effect alleen maar versterkt. Steeds komen de hoofdpersonages in een situatie die ervoor zorgt dat in elk geval één van hen wordt meegesleurd door bovengenoemd ‘elsewhere’. Het lezen van de verhalen voelt als een storm die woedt in het hoofd van de schrijver; het leest alsof Blackwood zijn eigen existentialistische worsteling probeert te bezweren door het te proberen in woorden te vatten, iets wat onmogelijk lijkt te zijn.
August 23, 2022
A collection of five complex and demanding fantastical stories. As usual with Blackwood, they deal with the true power of things hidden beneath the veneer of reality. Unfortunately they sag under the weight of their language. Blackwood has a very extensive library of descriptive vocabulary which he gladly uses in these five stories. Hence the (rather poor) rating.
I gladly make an exception for the story 'The damned', which deals with a haunted house, troubled by an infinite number of damned souls buried beneath the soil. The story is - very uncommonly - defined by a lack of action, its power is purely emotional and spiritual.
I gladly make an exception for the story 'The damned', which deals with a haunted house, troubled by an infinite number of damned souls buried beneath the soil. The story is - very uncommonly - defined by a lack of action, its power is purely emotional and spiritual.
October 29, 2023
DNF at 44%. The first two stories have a lot of elemental grandeur, but also a bit too much religion for my tastes. The third one is just deathly boring (and has yet more religion). This is worse than Three More John Silence Stories, and despite S T Joshi's recommendation, I think that Blackwood and I just don't mix.
March 3, 2020
Overall, good stories, but nothing that really appealed to me.
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie was interesting.
The Sacrifice was kind of bizarre. I don't think I got the point.
The Damned was ok? I guess.
A Descent into Egypt was interesting, but I didn't get the point.
Wayfarers was interesting, but didn't do much for me.
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie was interesting.
The Sacrifice was kind of bizarre. I don't think I got the point.
The Damned was ok? I guess.
A Descent into Egypt was interesting, but I didn't get the point.
Wayfarers was interesting, but didn't do much for me.
December 19, 2016
The Damned gets four stars, but everything else was two. It was mostly just the same themes the Blackwood usually uses to fill in his plots' gaps. Not disappointing, because I am at the point where I am expecting his stories to be dull and repetitive. This met my low expectations.
June 26, 2023
Some of Algernon Blackwood's stories, like "The Willows", are masterfully creepy and good. I also really enjoyed his John Silence stories. However, many of these stories are just interminable impressions in which nothing really happens. Everything is in the narrator's mind, and it drags on and on.
April 19, 2025
These both dragged and were the perfect length. They were about nothing and also asked perfectly poignant questions about human life. They had overwrought sentences and had an unparalleled eloquence.
I want more.
I want more.
July 17, 2024
4-1/2 stars.
July 27, 2025
The vibes (soft, dreamy horror) are immaculate, but the writing did really drag in places.
July 17, 2015
hmm kinda wanted to give it 4 stars but some of the stories were just way too slow. I don't generally mind slow but parts were just kinda rough. If it were just the first three stories (The Regeneration of Lord Ernie, The Sacrifice, and The Damned), I'd be giving it 5 stars, but "A Descent into Egypt" derailed it for me (and that one was apparently lauded by none less than Lovecraft himself!). The last story, "Wayfarers", was pretty good but also took off into almost dreamscape territory which I've never been able to get into. I really like some of the other Blackwood stories I've read, too, so I'll definitely recommend him! "The Willows" and "The Glamour of The Snow" are two particular favorites of mine (neither included in this collection).
paused
May 2, 2020I read The Regeneration of Lord Ernie. It certainly wasn't *bad* but for me personally I just found the descriptions too long winded - you could reasonably cut half of it and I wouldn't feel like I'd missed much. I think part of the problem is I just really can't get a good mental image from all the descriptions - I find them quite repetitive even when he's describing things changing. The Willows suffers from this problem a bit but I felt the uniqueness of some of the images really lingered with me. This one not so much.
January 25, 2015
H.P. Lovecraft considered Algernon Blackwood one of the four modern masters of weird fiction. Algernon's writing is usually very descriptive and leaves you full of awe. This collection is not his best work, but it was worth the read. If you aren't used to literature from the early 1900s, you might find it a hard read.
October 24, 2012
I feel like it's my charge that everyone should hear from me at least once that their lives are incomplete until finding Algernon Blackwood in some form. Read him. Do it now, or I judge you.
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July 12, 2012Collected, old-school horror!
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February 1, 2016Reviewed by Sandy: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
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March 7, 2018Over the Unworldly Top.
Having enjoyed his other short stories, I failed on this book, finding the text too wordy, forced and cold blooded. Perhaps he endeavoured to create intense emotion, but the result was confused repetitive text. The Regeneration Of Lord Ernie, was a laughable account of pagan rituals, which probably continue to this day in certain remote regions and are regarded as dubious religious alternative sects. But this extreme example of male weakness being transformed by the elements into an outrageous and electric person, capable of anything, only to crash and burn at 29 years. The overfilled passages of useless vocabulary led nowhere, where a succinct paragraph would have sufficed. Rather than engaging with the mountain people, we were served a mish mash of shadowy creepy driven humans, having a good time, at the expense of wind and fire. Better than Ectasy, LSD or similar supposedly, though who knew what he really meant.
For me, the story was lacking in romance. What happened to the 'rushing women', and why a boy of such charm and beauty should end his days single.
a paragraph would have sufficed
Having enjoyed his other short stories, I failed on this book, finding the text too wordy, forced and cold blooded. Perhaps he endeavoured to create intense emotion, but the result was confused repetitive text. The Regeneration Of Lord Ernie, was a laughable account of pagan rituals, which probably continue to this day in certain remote regions and are regarded as dubious religious alternative sects. But this extreme example of male weakness being transformed by the elements into an outrageous and electric person, capable of anything, only to crash and burn at 29 years. The overfilled passages of useless vocabulary led nowhere, where a succinct paragraph would have sufficed. Rather than engaging with the mountain people, we were served a mish mash of shadowy creepy driven humans, having a good time, at the expense of wind and fire. Better than Ectasy, LSD or similar supposedly, though who knew what he really meant.
For me, the story was lacking in romance. What happened to the 'rushing women', and why a boy of such charm and beauty should end his days single.
a paragraph would have sufficed
August 7, 2018
“I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains,” said Bilbo in the Fellowship of the Ring, and one cannot but touch the craving, the dramatic yearning for the high, snow-crested peaks, the pillars of the Sky, and all adventures hiding amidst these ranges and beyond them. Mountains are deeply embedded with epic feeling, magically so – there is something uncanny in their majestic countenance.
In the first two stories of his 1914 book “Incredible Adventures” Algernon Blackwood brings to life such mountains as we have only gazed upon through great storms and deep snow, in dreams and songs. Great awe and enchantment lie upon their slopes, waiting to be communed by the wanderer, yet never yielding their secrets to one who comes with conquest in heart.
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie
A tutor travels with his student around the world, ending up in the mountains of Switzerland, where the vast majority of this story takes place. The student, Lord Ernie, is a youth seemingly devoid of Will and lust for life, a sluggish being. All this changes up there, at the pagan peaks of western Switzerland, where fires roar at night like the Gondor beacons of yore. In this, the best story of the book, Algernon Blackwood masterfully evokes the spirit of the mountains, of pagan nature, of the terrible, beautiful majesty of the occult working. And what bursts forth from this grandeur is a celebration of vigorous and colorful pagan life, a ritual that blends all participating mortal units in an omnipotent current:
“He saw the human faces, symbols of spiritual dominion over all lesser orders, each one possessed of belief, intelligence and will. Singly so feeble, together so invincible, this assemblage, unscorched by the fire and by the wind unmoved, seemed to him impressive beyond all possible words. And a further inkling of the truth flashed on him as he stared: that a group of humans, a crowd, combining upon a given object with concentrated purpose, possessed of that terrific power, certain faith, may know in themselves the energy to move great mountains.”
Here enchantment is praised, not feared; it doesn’t evoke horror but wonderful awe – and that is where the magic of Blackwood writing really shines: in the fact that he embraces the occult from inside, not alienating it. Here lies the acceptance of the Other, the revelry in Its weirdness and otherness, a vast contrast to the majority of horror and occult fiction writers who use the occult as a menacing Other that must be either overcome (thus re-establishing banality and routine) or be a herald of Doom. Algernon Blackwood’s Golden Dawn training was crucial for this outcome – one can trace in here the descriptions of the fire and air elements in the magical society’s papers, though in the story the implementation of said characteristics and nature is done with infinitely more poetic and effective language. This is the rejoicing of occult ecstasy, a view towards a new paradigm.
The Sacrifice
Paysage d’Hiver’s namesake release is graced with an evocative and minimalistic cover art, of a figure going down a slope. Now multiply the scale by the hundreds, reverse the direction, and you get a glimpse of this story’s iconography. This is less a story than a poetics of ritual working and transcendence, for the premise is extremely simple: a man who thinks that he has lost his gods undertakes a mountain expedition before dawn, an expedition which is slowly revealed to be doubling over as a ritual. Mountains again, more unapproachable and cosmic in nature this time, more black and white one could say (it is pre-dawn after all). The long-winded ascent is set with mastery, reminiscent of a vast, divine game board. And in a short paragraph Algernon Blackwood manages to capture what is probably the essence of magick, corporality:
“That knowledge arises from action; that to do the thing invites the teaching and explains it. Action, moreover, is symbolical; a group of men, a family, an entire nation, engaged in those daily movements which are the working out of their destiny, perform a Ceremony which is in direct relation somewhere to the pattern of greater happenings which are the teachings of the Gods. Let the body imitate, reproduce—in a bedroom, in a wood —anywhere—the movements of the stars, and the meaning of those stars shall sink down into the heart. The movements constitute a script, a language. To mimic the gestures of a stranger is to understand his mood, his point of view—to establish a grave and solemn intimacy. Temples are everywhere, for the entire earth is a temple, and the body, House of Royalty, is the biggest temple of them all.”
Unfortunately, the three remaining stories are somewhat lesser in execution, though not in ideas. “The Damned” is a brooding haunted house story with some amazing descriptions of environment (the goblin garden for instance) and the overlapping of past genius locii in the house, yet is quite tiring due to the slowness of unraveling, the scarcity of events, the laden language, and the absence of a climax, (which nevertheless was intentional). “A Descent into Egypt” is a story that examines Time, contrasts the unmoving and eternal Past with the ever-fleeting Present, a play upon the themes of Cyclical and Linear Time one could say. Unfortunately, it also suffers from garrulity, especially from never-ending monologues, though it does get better, at least image-wise, at the second half. Finally the little story, “Wayfarers”, also deals with the matter of time and the conquering of it by Wills, yet it also suffers from heavy language and a thinness of plot.
In his momentous essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” Lovecraft wrote that “It may be well to remark here that occult believers are probably less effective than materialists in delineating the spectral and the fantastic, since to them the phantom world is so commonplace a reality that they tend to refer to it with less awe, remoteness, and impressiveness than do those who see in it an absolute and stupendous violation of the natural order.” He may be right as far as the remoteness department is concerned, but not the awe and impressiveness ones are a different matter. For the phantom world can never be considered commonplace. In this collection, Algernon Blackwood is revealed as a writer for those of us searching a glorious contact with the occult Other, full of awe and longing, leaving alienating fear aside. A shining if somewhat uneven demonstration of The Magician-Writer casting a spell.
In the first two stories of his 1914 book “Incredible Adventures” Algernon Blackwood brings to life such mountains as we have only gazed upon through great storms and deep snow, in dreams and songs. Great awe and enchantment lie upon their slopes, waiting to be communed by the wanderer, yet never yielding their secrets to one who comes with conquest in heart.
The Regeneration of Lord Ernie
A tutor travels with his student around the world, ending up in the mountains of Switzerland, where the vast majority of this story takes place. The student, Lord Ernie, is a youth seemingly devoid of Will and lust for life, a sluggish being. All this changes up there, at the pagan peaks of western Switzerland, where fires roar at night like the Gondor beacons of yore. In this, the best story of the book, Algernon Blackwood masterfully evokes the spirit of the mountains, of pagan nature, of the terrible, beautiful majesty of the occult working. And what bursts forth from this grandeur is a celebration of vigorous and colorful pagan life, a ritual that blends all participating mortal units in an omnipotent current:
“He saw the human faces, symbols of spiritual dominion over all lesser orders, each one possessed of belief, intelligence and will. Singly so feeble, together so invincible, this assemblage, unscorched by the fire and by the wind unmoved, seemed to him impressive beyond all possible words. And a further inkling of the truth flashed on him as he stared: that a group of humans, a crowd, combining upon a given object with concentrated purpose, possessed of that terrific power, certain faith, may know in themselves the energy to move great mountains.”
Here enchantment is praised, not feared; it doesn’t evoke horror but wonderful awe – and that is where the magic of Blackwood writing really shines: in the fact that he embraces the occult from inside, not alienating it. Here lies the acceptance of the Other, the revelry in Its weirdness and otherness, a vast contrast to the majority of horror and occult fiction writers who use the occult as a menacing Other that must be either overcome (thus re-establishing banality and routine) or be a herald of Doom. Algernon Blackwood’s Golden Dawn training was crucial for this outcome – one can trace in here the descriptions of the fire and air elements in the magical society’s papers, though in the story the implementation of said characteristics and nature is done with infinitely more poetic and effective language. This is the rejoicing of occult ecstasy, a view towards a new paradigm.
The Sacrifice
Paysage d’Hiver’s namesake release is graced with an evocative and minimalistic cover art, of a figure going down a slope. Now multiply the scale by the hundreds, reverse the direction, and you get a glimpse of this story’s iconography. This is less a story than a poetics of ritual working and transcendence, for the premise is extremely simple: a man who thinks that he has lost his gods undertakes a mountain expedition before dawn, an expedition which is slowly revealed to be doubling over as a ritual. Mountains again, more unapproachable and cosmic in nature this time, more black and white one could say (it is pre-dawn after all). The long-winded ascent is set with mastery, reminiscent of a vast, divine game board. And in a short paragraph Algernon Blackwood manages to capture what is probably the essence of magick, corporality:
“That knowledge arises from action; that to do the thing invites the teaching and explains it. Action, moreover, is symbolical; a group of men, a family, an entire nation, engaged in those daily movements which are the working out of their destiny, perform a Ceremony which is in direct relation somewhere to the pattern of greater happenings which are the teachings of the Gods. Let the body imitate, reproduce—in a bedroom, in a wood —anywhere—the movements of the stars, and the meaning of those stars shall sink down into the heart. The movements constitute a script, a language. To mimic the gestures of a stranger is to understand his mood, his point of view—to establish a grave and solemn intimacy. Temples are everywhere, for the entire earth is a temple, and the body, House of Royalty, is the biggest temple of them all.”
Unfortunately, the three remaining stories are somewhat lesser in execution, though not in ideas. “The Damned” is a brooding haunted house story with some amazing descriptions of environment (the goblin garden for instance) and the overlapping of past genius locii in the house, yet is quite tiring due to the slowness of unraveling, the scarcity of events, the laden language, and the absence of a climax, (which nevertheless was intentional). “A Descent into Egypt” is a story that examines Time, contrasts the unmoving and eternal Past with the ever-fleeting Present, a play upon the themes of Cyclical and Linear Time one could say. Unfortunately, it also suffers from garrulity, especially from never-ending monologues, though it does get better, at least image-wise, at the second half. Finally the little story, “Wayfarers”, also deals with the matter of time and the conquering of it by Wills, yet it also suffers from heavy language and a thinness of plot.
In his momentous essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” Lovecraft wrote that “It may be well to remark here that occult believers are probably less effective than materialists in delineating the spectral and the fantastic, since to them the phantom world is so commonplace a reality that they tend to refer to it with less awe, remoteness, and impressiveness than do those who see in it an absolute and stupendous violation of the natural order.” He may be right as far as the remoteness department is concerned, but not the awe and impressiveness ones are a different matter. For the phantom world can never be considered commonplace. In this collection, Algernon Blackwood is revealed as a writer for those of us searching a glorious contact with the occult Other, full of awe and longing, leaving alienating fear aside. A shining if somewhat uneven demonstration of The Magician-Writer casting a spell.
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