Late in the 18th century authors began to write 'Gothic' stories as a way of putting literature back in touch with the irrational, the supernatural and the bizarre, which had been neglected in the 'Age of Reason.'

This superb new collection brings together stories from the earliest decades of Gothic writing with later 19th and early 20th century tales from the period in which Gothic diversified into the familiar forms of the ghost- and horror-story. Work by writers such as Poe, Dickens, Hawthorne, Gaskell and M.R. James appears alongside that of anonymous writers from the start of the period and many lesser-known authors from Britain and America. Some of these stories, like the haunting 'The Lame Priest' are 'lost masterpieces' and several have never been anthologised before. Together they cover the spectrum of Gothic story-telling - tales of madness and violence, of shape-shifters and spectres, that express some of their deepest fears of the human mind - insanity, sexuality, death and the often terrible power of the past to catch up with the present.

In a lively, authoritative introduction David Blair provides fresh insights and a detailed commentary on the stories' place in the complex traditions of Gothic writing in British and American literature.

Contents

• General Introduction by Keith Carabine
• Foreword by David Blair
• Introduction by David Blair
• Select Bibliography
• Sir Bertrand: A Fragment by Anna Letitia Barbauld
• Captive of the Banditti by Nathan Drake and Unknown Author
• Extracts from Gosschen's Diary: No. 1 by John Wilson
• The Parricide's Tale (extract from Melmoth the Wanderer) by Charles Robert Maturin
• The Spectre Bride by William Harrison Ainsworth
• The Tapestried Chamber by Sir Walter Scott
• Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe
• A Madman's Manuscript (extract from The Pickwick Papers) by Charles Dickens
• Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• Ethan Brand by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Death of Halpin Frayser by Ambrose Bierce
• Canon Alberic's Scrapbook by M.R. James
• No. 252 Rue M. le Prince by Ralph Adams Cram
• The Lame Priest by S. Carleton
• Luella Miller by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• The Bird in the Garden by Richard Middleton
• The Room in the Tower by E.F. Benson