British writer Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) wrote an immense quantity of weird fiction, short and long, over a career that spanned five decades. Beginning with such early triumphs as "The Willows" (which H. P. Lovecraft regarded as the greatest weird tale in all literature) and "The Listener," Blackwood went on to write many distinctive stories that reflected his wide-ranging travels in the Swiss Alps ("The Glamour of the Snow"), Canada ("The Wendigo"), and Egypt ("Sand, A Descent into Egypt"). He also created the "psychic detective" John Silence. Blackwood’s work is united by a deep belief in pantheism and reincarnation, and his tales are characterized by a profound understanding of the psychological effects of terror and wonder upon the receptive individual. This volume presents a wide array of Blackwood’s weird tales, including a number of his substantial novellas, a form in which he excelled. The most accurate and authoritative texts are used, and the volume concludes with a bibliography of first appearances of all the items included. The volume is edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on weird fiction. Joshi is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012), and he has prepared editions of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce, and many other weird writers.
Author
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. 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. The son of a preacher, Blackwood had a life-long interest in the supernatural, the occult, and spiritualism, and firmly believed that humans possess latent psychic powers. The autobiography Episodes Before Thirty (1923) tells of his lean years as a journalist in New York. In the late 1940s, Blackwood had a television program on the BBC on which he read . . . ghost stories!
