The Sistrum and Other Ghost Stories

by Alice Perrin, Richard Dalby (Introduction), Paul Lowe (Illustrations)

2001 marks the centenary of Alice Perrin's remarkable debut collection of macabre short stories East of Suez. Like B.M. Croker, another 'Mistress of the Macabre' in this series, Alice Perrin was an extremely popular best-selling 'Anglo-Indian' novelist in the early years of the 20th century. Both were prolific contributors of weird and bizarre colonial ghost stories to Edwardian magazines.

For this volume Richard Dalby has collected fifteen of Perrin's best tales from her various collections which have all been out-of-print for more than seventy years.

Contents

ix • Introduction (The Sistrum and Other Ghost Stories) • (2001) • essay by Richard Dalby
1 • Caulfield's Crime • (1892) • short story by Alice Perrin
10 • In the Next Room • (1893) • short story by Alice Perrin
16 • Chunia, Ayah • (1901) • short story by Alice Perrin
22 • The Sistrum • (1906) • short story by Alice Perrin
33 • Powers of Darkness • (1906) • short story by Alice Perrin
44 • The Bead Necklace • (1906) • short story by Alice Perrin
54 • The Packet of Letters • (1904) • short story by Alice Perrin
60 • The Footsteps in the Dust • (1906) • short story by Alice Perrin
67 • "Moore" • (1906) • short story by Alice Perrin
81 • "Thirty Acres" • (1917) • short story by Alice Perrin
91 • The Miniature • (1917) • short story by Alice Perrin
99 • The Admiral's Dog • (1917) • short story by Alice Perrin
106 • Old Ayah • (1917) • short story by Alice Perrin
113 • The Brahminy Bull • (1926) • short story by Alice Perrin
125 • Ann White • (1926) • short story by Alice Perrin
137 • Sources (The Sistrum and Other Ghost Stories) • (2001) • essay by uncredited

Genres: Horror

134 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Alice Perrin was born in India in 1867, the daughter of Major General John Innes Robinson, of the Bengal Cavalry, and Bertha Beidermann Robinson. After her education in England, Perrin married Charles Perrin (d. 1931), an engineer in the India Public Works Department, in 1886, and the couple returned to India for the next sixteen years. Perrin’s career as a popular Anglo-Indian novelist and short story writer began with the two-volume novel Into Temptation, published in 1894. Her first collection of short stories, East of Suez, appeared in 1901. She continued publishing novels every two to three years until her last novel, Other Sheep, was published in 1932, two years before her death in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1934. In total, she published seventeen novels, many of which focus on the British colonial experience in India, such as The Spell of the Jungle (1902), The Anglo-Indians (1912), The Happy Hunting Ground (1914), Star of India (1919), and Government House (1925).

Reviews

[Dianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spooky, wish I had to read it in October honestly.