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The Glamour of the Snow
He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon the desolate mountains, stared dizzily about him, tried to rise. At first his muscles would not act; a numbing, aching pain possessed him. He uttered a long, thin cry for help, and heard its faintness swallowed by the wind. And then he understood vaguely why he was only warm-not dead. For this very wind that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of driven snow against his body while he slept. Like a curving wave it ran beside him. It was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the crash, and the coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.
28 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1912
113 people want to read
About the author
Algernon Blackwood
1,368 books1,185 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 - 30 of 30 reviews
January 7, 2018
A loner of men, that is Hibbert and seems taken in with nature. He goes to a ski resort. He is disconnected to everyone around him except for this girl he runs into before midnight on the skating rink. He is enthralled with a girl who skates onto the rink and is snuggled into her outerwear, so much that Hibbert cannot see her face, but they skate together and he is smitten.
She disappears and days later he is looking for her everywhere. When he runs into her finally she tells him he looked in all the wrong places for her. They ski the mountain. From the chimes of the bells they venture on for five hours. He had never been that high up before and called her "a child of snow". She coaxed him on higher and higher. Hibbert stated it was time to return home. She pushed him down and kissed him. When she said his name in the voice of his mother and a past love, along with the kisses he fell asleep from exhaustion.
When he woke...
The well worded prose about the wonder of nature with his long sentences is like being surrounded by a bank of fluffy snow. Ha! There is a sense of wonder about this story. The stranger tempts Hibbert, is she evil or a fallen angel?
She disappears and days later he is looking for her everywhere. When he runs into her finally she tells him he looked in all the wrong places for her. They ski the mountain. From the chimes of the bells they venture on for five hours. He had never been that high up before and called her "a child of snow". She coaxed him on higher and higher. Hibbert stated it was time to return home. She pushed him down and kissed him. When she said his name in the voice of his mother and a past love, along with the kisses he fell asleep from exhaustion.
When he woke...
The well worded prose about the wonder of nature with his long sentences is like being surrounded by a bank of fluffy snow. Ha! There is a sense of wonder about this story. The stranger tempts Hibbert, is she evil or a fallen angel?
March 6, 2016
I really enjoyed this story. a lot.
May 28, 2017
I have arranged my thoughts into a haiku:
"Preferring nature,
What's lurking WITHIN nature
Will gladly have you."
"Preferring nature,
What's lurking WITHIN nature
Will gladly have you."
August 5, 2023
Hibbert who was on vacation in Switzerland on the slopes of the Valais Alps where he could be at peace to write his book, yet at the same time enjoy the winter sports. While skating alone one night he meets a beautiful woman dressed in grey clothes of some kind, though not with the customary long gloves or sweater, finding her hands were bare, and "presently when he skated with her, he wondered with something like astonishment at their dry and icy coldness." Days later after some freshly fallen snow had accumulated, Hibbert, leaving the hotel after a costume dance sees her on his way back to his room. They decide to climb the slopes and ski. The hunchback wife of the shoemaker, "looking by chance from her window, caught his figure moving swiftly up the road. She had other thoughts, for she knew and believed the old traditions of the witches and snow-beings that steal the souls of men. She had even heard, 'twas said, the dreaded synagogue pass roaring down the street at night, and now, as then, she hid her eyes. "They've called to him ... and he must go," she murmured, making the sign of the cross." After five hours of climbing the precipitous slopes Hibbert learns that she is an ice sprite, intent on his death.
November 11, 2019
Weird Fiction Book Club 13-Story Challenge
#3: Algernon Blackwood
The Glamour of the Snow by Algernon Blackwood
4.2⭐
From Algernon Blackwood's The Willows and Other Tales of Terror: Premium Weird Fiction and Ghost Stories edited, annotated, and illustrated by M Grant Kellermeyer
#3: Algernon Blackwood
The Glamour of the Snow by Algernon Blackwood
4.2⭐
From Algernon Blackwood's The Willows and Other Tales of Terror: Premium Weird Fiction and Ghost Stories edited, annotated, and illustrated by M Grant Kellermeyer
December 22, 2022
I think this tale is especially perfect reading for The Winter Solstice.
"The Glamour of the Snow" takes place in one of author Algernon Blackwood's favorite settings: the Alps. An English writer named Hibbert is vacationing there. He's a bit of a loner, feeling detached from the other holiday skiers.
But he is enchanted by the place. The mountains, the cold, the snow are all beautiful to him, and he feels he appreciates them more than others do.
It is perhaps this special connection with the natural world that prompts Hibbert to go skating at night. There, on the otherwise deserted rink, he encounters a ghostly ice skater. And falls in love with her.
This is a lovely story, filled with those long Blackwood sentences that seem to freeze time.
"The Glamour of the Snow" takes place in one of author Algernon Blackwood's favorite settings: the Alps. An English writer named Hibbert is vacationing there. He's a bit of a loner, feeling detached from the other holiday skiers.
But he is enchanted by the place. The mountains, the cold, the snow are all beautiful to him, and he feels he appreciates them more than others do.
It is perhaps this special connection with the natural world that prompts Hibbert to go skating at night. There, on the otherwise deserted rink, he encounters a ghostly ice skater. And falls in love with her.
This is a lovely story, filled with those long Blackwood sentences that seem to freeze time.
November 4, 2022
Perhaps if I read this book when I was first exploring horror, I would have been more frightened. It felt very predictable unfortunately but still chilling
November 8, 2024
Spooky snow lady
Read
January 13, 2019I did not expect as good of a story when I first saw the title. I bought a collection of works by Blackwood just because I wanted to read The Wendigo, and ended up liking The Glamour of the Snow much more than that one. My only complaint is that he should have left out the last chapter. The last chapter feels like a tacked on happy ending while the quote he ends the previous chapter with is amazingly tragic and romantic.
"He made one more feeble effort to resist. Then, realizing even while he struggled that this weight about his heart was sweeter than anything life could ever bring, he let his muscles relax, and sank back into the soft oblivion of the covering snow. Her wintry kisses bore him into sleep."
"He made one more feeble effort to resist. Then, realizing even while he struggled that this weight about his heart was sweeter than anything life could ever bring, he let his muscles relax, and sank back into the soft oblivion of the covering snow. Her wintry kisses bore him into sleep."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 26, 2018
In a ski-resort. Man meets woman, falls in love. But she only wants to meet him when it snows.
He gets told by an old woman in the village that his love is a snow-demon, that will suck his soul out of his body. He believes her and kills the snow-demon. But than he realizes his mistake as he has killed an eccentric, but innocent woman. He goes crazy and first kills the old woman and then starts to hunt down and kill all the tourists in the resort, in the most brutal and horrifying ways.
That could have been the story, but it isn't
To know what really happened, you have to read it yourself. HAHAHA
Just know that I enjoyed it
He gets told by an old woman in the village that his love is a snow-demon, that will suck his soul out of his body. He believes her and kills the snow-demon. But than he realizes his mistake as he has killed an eccentric, but innocent woman. He goes crazy and first kills the old woman and then starts to hunt down and kill all the tourists in the resort, in the most brutal and horrifying ways.
That could have been the story, but it isn't
To know what really happened, you have to read it yourself. HAHAHA
Just know that I enjoyed it
August 13, 2014
Of Nature and Men, of love and grief, an ice cold tale that might freeze you to death or peaceful sleep among the legends of the snow.
August 15, 2021
God saved his pagan soul
April 18, 2023
Moody and atmospheric, this is a wonderful story of Gothic romance.
Blackwood writes with a keen awareness of the dangers of nature, even as it is seductive to the senses of men. Snow, in particular, is understood as something quite deadening. It hides the contours of the world upon which it sits, and the slowness of such mute gatherings--the atomized progress of it, with each single flake--serves to as a trick. Such light and feathery flakes! To fall into the flurry, to give up, to die--does not it seems quite sweet?
And this idea, is, of course, the one which our tale revolves around. Hibbert, in a battle with his alienation from human society, and his strong inclination toward those lonely and frozen places of nature, one night ski's with a young woman. All the rest of the party had gone in just before, he deciding to abandon them on a whim, and she appearing out of nowhere, as soft as could be. He falls in love with her on the instant, taking in her slender build, her chilliness, and her intriguing resemblance to something from his past... the two women he most loved, both dead: his mother and lover.
Soon, however, they depart, and he searches for her high and low. Unable to find her, yet fully aware of her presence, he waits--it snows--and he is sure that he shall soon see her again. And he does. She appears, leads him up the highest slopes of the Alps (this all happening again late in the night), and he surrenders utterly to her freezing pressure, her resemblance to her love, and her kisses.
He is nevertheless saved. The wind contrives him a shelter with the snow--we must add, the same snow which allowed for greater ski-ing, precipitating the whole affair--and he is able to race away the next morning, followed by legion of the dead, all of whom wish to keep him in their anger; he is able to reach a party of men, is saved, and lives to tell the tale.
In this story, as in many of Blackwood's work, there are themes of religion. The yearning toward nature which our protagonist feels is "pagan", and the fear which the woman feels at the church clearly suggests something about Christianity. One must wonder what this story would be like to Blackwood himself. In many of his stories, the sacrifice requisite toward reunion with such-and-such pagan god is merely death. Absorption into the being which one worships is the final state of these sorts of men. What, then, do we make of Hibbert, who intends to some degree this sacrifice--is very afraid that his pagan soul shall do such without his being aware, because of that battle of the soul mentioned at the beginning of the story--but does not follow through?
Blackwood writes with a keen awareness of the dangers of nature, even as it is seductive to the senses of men. Snow, in particular, is understood as something quite deadening. It hides the contours of the world upon which it sits, and the slowness of such mute gatherings--the atomized progress of it, with each single flake--serves to as a trick. Such light and feathery flakes! To fall into the flurry, to give up, to die--does not it seems quite sweet?
And this idea, is, of course, the one which our tale revolves around. Hibbert, in a battle with his alienation from human society, and his strong inclination toward those lonely and frozen places of nature, one night ski's with a young woman. All the rest of the party had gone in just before, he deciding to abandon them on a whim, and she appearing out of nowhere, as soft as could be. He falls in love with her on the instant, taking in her slender build, her chilliness, and her intriguing resemblance to something from his past... the two women he most loved, both dead: his mother and lover.
Soon, however, they depart, and he searches for her high and low. Unable to find her, yet fully aware of her presence, he waits--it snows--and he is sure that he shall soon see her again. And he does. She appears, leads him up the highest slopes of the Alps (this all happening again late in the night), and he surrenders utterly to her freezing pressure, her resemblance to her love, and her kisses.
He is nevertheless saved. The wind contrives him a shelter with the snow--we must add, the same snow which allowed for greater ski-ing, precipitating the whole affair--and he is able to race away the next morning, followed by legion of the dead, all of whom wish to keep him in their anger; he is able to reach a party of men, is saved, and lives to tell the tale.
In this story, as in many of Blackwood's work, there are themes of religion. The yearning toward nature which our protagonist feels is "pagan", and the fear which the woman feels at the church clearly suggests something about Christianity. One must wonder what this story would be like to Blackwood himself. In many of his stories, the sacrifice requisite toward reunion with such-and-such pagan god is merely death. Absorption into the being which one worships is the final state of these sorts of men. What, then, do we make of Hibbert, who intends to some degree this sacrifice--is very afraid that his pagan soul shall do such without his being aware, because of that battle of the soul mentioned at the beginning of the story--but does not follow through?
December 17, 2025
A short read perfect for a dark wintery day. It's a moody read, with a long build-up hinting of something dark to come.
Hibbert, a punctilious person, and is of three worlds: tourist - the world to which he belonged to, peasant - the world he was drawn to, nature - the world he discovered during his time at the Valais Alps.
Hibbert, a punctilious person, and is of three worlds: tourist - the world to which he belonged to, peasant - the world he was drawn to, nature - the world he discovered during his time at the Valais Alps.
June 23, 2020
Perhaps if I'd read this when I first started to explore horror I would have enjoyed it more. Blackwood's writing works fine but I could tell where the story was going from the moment the mysterious young woman is noticed.
December 29, 2017
Classic Blackwood. A bit uncanny, but quite nice.
October 13, 2018
Surely fabulous.
December 31, 2021
Eh I was promised an unsettling and dreadful atmosphere and I did not get it.
This was a bit dull for me honestly. Beautifully written, but dull as a story.
This was a bit dull for me honestly. Beautifully written, but dull as a story.
January 2, 2022
Classic non gore horror
July 8, 2025
Strange weird story, rather touching
December 6, 2025
Short and sweet, hits all the Algerny notes. Alluring, yet dangerous nature, this time the snow.
August 16, 2023
An apt analogy of life, love, and its inevitable betrayal.
October 8, 2012
Blackwood is quite possibly one of the most respected names in horror literature and horror, fantasy, sci-fi writers often list him an influential in their work.
It's often that I'll explore an author because a more contemporary author mentions them, provoking in me a curiosity to see the work of the individuals who inspired the work I feel inspired by. Such is the case with Lovecraft, Blackwood, Rhodes, and Lafferty. And for the most part, I see the appeal and the association.
I've read quite a few short stories of Blackwood and will agree that he is aces at setting an atmosphere of eerieness. I'm not always as certain that his strength lies in characterization or plot, but I definitely intuitively understand that there is something special and distinct about his work although his plot twists may have been recycled by generations since causing a somewhat cliche tale.
I did enjoy The Glamour of the Snow, but honestly feel it would have been better minus the last chapter.
It's often that I'll explore an author because a more contemporary author mentions them, provoking in me a curiosity to see the work of the individuals who inspired the work I feel inspired by. Such is the case with Lovecraft, Blackwood, Rhodes, and Lafferty. And for the most part, I see the appeal and the association.
I've read quite a few short stories of Blackwood and will agree that he is aces at setting an atmosphere of eerieness. I'm not always as certain that his strength lies in characterization or plot, but I definitely intuitively understand that there is something special and distinct about his work although his plot twists may have been recycled by generations since causing a somewhat cliche tale.
I did enjoy The Glamour of the Snow, but honestly feel it would have been better minus the last chapter.
October 20, 2025
Pacing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Style: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Setting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Character: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Theme: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Style: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Setting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Character: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Theme: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
March 6, 2014
A tourist at a mountain ski resort becomes captivated by a mysterious young woman.
About the Author:
-----------------
Born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of north-west Kent) and educated at Wellington College, Algernon Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, and working as a newspaper reporter in New York City before moving to England and starting to write horror stories. He was very successful, writing 10 books of short stories and appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature, and many of his stories reflect this.
About the Author:
-----------------
Born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of north-west Kent) and educated at Wellington College, Algernon Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, and working as a newspaper reporter in New York City before moving to England and starting to write horror stories. He was very successful, writing 10 books of short stories and appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature, and many of his stories reflect this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 26, 2023
The setting is a ski resort where a writer has come to do some writing and indulge in his love of nature. Blackwood is masterful at setting up a scene. His descriptions of the physical environment transport the reader to another time and pace. Hibbert has come to this place to get in touch with his pagan nature, and inexplicably pagan nature gets in touch with him. Available in HorrorBabble's Ultimate Weird Tales Collection, Vol. 1, excellently narrated by Ian Gordon. Originally published in 1911.
December 7, 2016
Chilling and beautiful...
December 28, 2024
A very eery and chilling - pun intended - story about the power of nature. Its duality - the wilderness is both enthralling and dangerous - is a major theme for the author.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews