Great Tales of Terror

by S.T. Joshi (Editor)

These 23 chilling tales tell of the returning dead, haunted places, weird creatures, and the supernatural in "The Return of the Soul" by Robert Hichens, "The Mummy's Foot" by Theophile Gautier, Lafcadio Hearn's "Of a Promise Broken," as well as spine-tinglers by Algernon Blackwood, J. Sheridan LeFanu, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Lord Dunsany, and other masters.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2002

About the author

Sunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James, and has edited collections of their works.

His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.

Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.

In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.

Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.

In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.

Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

S.T. Joshi has compiled a cool collection of terror, weird, and supernatural fiction. I think most of it is more weird fiction than terror, making the title a touch deceptive, but that doesn't take much away from the coolness of these stories. Most of them were written in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Many of these are more obscure writings by some well-known authors.

While not all of them were spectacular, the majority were really great. "The Return of the Soul", "The Coach", "The Diary of a God", "The Man Who Lost His Head", "Romance", and "The Root-Gatherers" were all fantastic, but they're not the only ones. The range of variations on horror is quite extensive; the terrifying ("Of a Promise Broken"), the chilling ("The Man Who Found Out"), the ghost story ("The Graven Image"), the serene ("Romance") and a whole lot more. The book makes me feel like this is a rather unappreciated genre that has a lot of value, which is perhaps often overlooked. Or maybe just not wanted.

[Quicksilver Quill · Rating 4 out of 5]

S.T. Joshi delivers an enjoyable collection with Great Tales of Terror, which actually contains some great tales of terror—true to its title. Many of these stories are quite visceral and hit you in a rather disturbing way, as you would hope they would.

To name a few: “The Return of the Soul” by Robert Hichens offers up a demented tale of reincarnation and revenge—although not quite in the way you would expect. Théophile Gautier’s “The Mummy’s Foot” presents the mystery of a strange relic as well as a phantasmagorical excursion into the ancient past. And “The Window of Horrors” by H.L. Mencken is as much a stylistic masterpiece as it is a disconcerting meditation on the lengths people will go to indulge in their own idiosyncratic passions.

In a word, many of these stories are delightfully creepy.

However, not every entry here is a horror story, per se. There is some fantasy, a bit of comedy, and even a prose poem. There are a few inevitable duds, of course, and several stories that, despite being well written, might leave you hanging. Everyone has his own tastes, after all. But for the most part these are quite good, and there are a few very interesting and exceptional ones as well.

Many of these tales serve as nice introductions to authors you may not have read or heard of. Quite a few of the writers were new to me and I was glad to make their acquaintance here.

The table of contents, oddly, does not list the authors of the tales. So if you are curious what’s inside:

“The Haunted Dragoon” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
“The Graven Image” by William Sharp
“The Return of the Soul” by Robert Hichens
“Of a Promise Broken” by Lafcadio Hearn
“The Promise” by Walter de la Mare
“The Ghosts of Austerlitz – A Christmas Story” by William Waldorf Astor
“The Coach” by Violet Hunt
“The Night School” by James Hopper
“The Mummy’s Foot” by Théophile Gautier
“The Discomfited Demon” by Ambrose Bierce
“The Tortoise” by W.F. Harvey
“Borrhomeo the Astrologer” by J. Sheridan LeFanu
“The Diary of a God” by Barry Pain
“The Three Drugs” by E. Nesbit
“The Window of Horrors” by H.L. Mencken
“The Man Who Lost His Head” by Thomas Burke
“The Queen of the Bees” by Erckmann-Chatrian
“The Caves of Death” by Gertrude Atherton
“The Soldiers’ Rest” by Arthur Machen
“Romance” by Lord Dunsany
“The Man Who Found Out” by Algernon Blackwood
“A Negligible Experiment” by J.D. Beresford
“The Root-Gatherers” by R.H. Barlow

[[on hiatus, probably forever] The rockabilly werewolf from Mars · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found maybe six or so of these to be interesting. I have a great deal of patience for Victorian horror fiction, but it seems like the editor was picking the most generic stories he could find. I'm not generally someone who agrees with Joshi's ideas about the horror genre, which likely explains some of the issues with this anthology (anyone who tries to separate horror from the world of cheap paperbacks is deluding themself); honestly, I don't think he understands what makes a good horror story, if these ones are representative of his taste. I will say that I did enjoy The Haunted Dragoon, The Graven Image, The Man Who Found Out, Of A Promise Broken, The Promise, The Coach, The Tortoise, and The Three Drugs (truly excellent), but the rest proved instantly forgettable.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compiling a horror anthology is a tricky proposition. This is just one man’s opinion, but a good collection usually has a balance of the psychological weighed against the visceral. The weird and gothic show the subtle, slowly built horrors like dread, while the more Grand Guignol go for the grossout and don’t apologize for it.
Great Tales of Terror is well-assembled, with some rarities, b-sides, and impressive finds compiled by S.T. Joshti, a man who definitely knows his onions. Works initially published under pseudonyms, now sussed back to their true authors, mean we get little-read gems by giants like Sheridan Le Fanu and even H.L. Mencken. Yes, Mencken, who spent decades lecturing us about the reading habits of the Boobus Americanus, once slummed for the pulps himself. He did it pseudonymously but thanks to Joshti’s sherlocking, the man’s sins have found him out. It’s a good thing, too, as his comically grim tale of a man who makes women into his mannequins is a ham-fisted exercise worthy of Roger Corman.
Despite such joys, the collection definitely skews a bit too much toward the interior, the man slowly going mad in the drawing room, for my taste. It reminds me of a riff by Bill Corbett during the airing of the tepid, b-movie mess that is The Screaming Skull: “It’s like they’ve got two servings of tension that they’re trying to feed to seven people.”
The best tales are usually the shorter ones. Tortoise by W.F. Harvey is a comically macabre yarn about a turtle that enjoys drinking spilled wine but won’t shy away from shed blood. The Discomfited Devil shows why Ambrose Bierce is fit to be considered a peer of both Poe and Twain, and it’s also short enough to qualify as flash fiction.
Theophile Gautier’s The Mummy’s Foot is a bit longer, but is Proustian in its loving description of the curios held by a gothic antiquarian. It’s contradicting my previous gripe to say this, but since it’s my review I can do what I want, and besides, it has to be said: Gautier is one of the great all-time masters of the subtle and rarified horror story. The little chill his works induces is worth more than the sledgehammer effect of ten splatterpunk tales of similar length. Every time I’ve encountered his work my initial reaction has been an eyeroll at the preciousness of the prose, followed by a jaw dropped as the perfection of his method finally sinks in. One of these days I’m going to learn my lesson and buy a book of nothing but his short stories rather than stumbling on them randomly in various collections. Then again, encountering them when I wasn’t expecting them is its own great delight.
Lastly, and bestly (sic), we have The Man Who Found Out by Algernon Blackwood. It’s easily the most chilling offering in the whole collection. It’s a short, deceptively simple tale about a man who, like Faust, Icarus, and everyone worth his salt in great fiction, gets in conflict with the Gods. He wants ultimate knowledge, even if assuming the burden of wisdom fit only for immortals will prove too onerous a burden for the human head. He gets his wish, long and hard, and a nightmarish sort of indifference begins to settle over his soul. He peers into the void and rather than it peering back at him, he simply becomes it. It has the vast cosmic scope of Lovecraft’s most unsettling works, giving one the feeling that yes, there is a design behind this universe. And no, you don’t want to know what it is.
Marginal rec for those wanting a little more blood than a tortoise can lap up, but for those with lace doilies, lean back on the antimacassar and read to your heart’s delight. You have found your huckleberry.

[Emmett Hoops · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in this collection all share one notable characteristic, which is the uniformly high quality of the way language is used to evoke suspense. This kind of writing is best enjoyed when read slowly, at evening, while one is alone.

[Simon Workman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great S.T. Joshi-edited collection, just slightly lower in quality than the other Dover anthology I reviewed ("Great Weird Tales"). A few of these stories are overwrought or buried under flowery prose, but like the other collection the majority are well worth the effort. Some of my favorites include Robert Hitchens' "Return of the Soul" (despite its blatant misogyny), W.F. Harvey's "The Tortoise, Edith Nesbit's "The Three Drugs," and Algernon Blackwood's "The Man Who Found Out."

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection! Especially if you're looking for horror fic that is well-styled and thought provoking, instead of the sex-'n-gore nightmare shorts you may find in modern works. In other words: can be read before bed without disrupting your melatonin supplement.