In The Dark Descent, hailed as one of the most important anthologies ever to examine horror fiction, editor David G. Hartwell traces the complex history of horror in literature back to the earliest short stories. The Dark Descent, which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, showcases the finest of these ever written--from the time-honored classics of Edgar Allan Poe, D.H. Lawrence, and Edith Wharton to the contemporary writing of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Ray Bradbury.

Contents:

• Introduction by David G. Hartwell
• PART I: The Color of Evil
  • "The Reach," by Stephen King
  • "Evening Primrose," by John Collier
  • "The Ash-Tree," by M. R. James
  • "The New Mother," by Lucy Clifford
  • "There's a Long, Long Trail a-Winding," by Russell Kirk
  • "The Call of Cthulhu," by H. P. Lovecraft
  • "The Summer People," by Shirley Jackson
  • "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs," by Harlan Ellison
  • "Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • "Mr. Justice Harbottle," by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
  • "The Crowd," by Ray Bradbury
  • "The Autopsy," by Michael Shea
  • "John Charrington's Wedding," by E. Nesbit
  • "Sticks," by Karl Edward Wagner
  • "Larger Than Oneself," by Robert Aickman
  • "Belsen Express," by Fritz Leiber
  • "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," by Robert Bloch
  • "If Damon Comes," by Charles L. Grant
  • "Vandy, Vandy," by Manly Wade Wellman
• PART II: The Medusa in the Shield
  • "The Swords," by Robert Aickman
  • "The Roaches," by Thomas M. Disch
  • "Bright Segment," by Theodore Sturgeon
  • "Dread," by Clive Barker
  • "The Fall in the House of Usher," by Edgar Allen Poe
  • "The Monkey," by Stephen King
  • "Within the Walls of Tyre," by Michael Bishop
  • "The Rats in the Walls," by H. P. Lovecraft
  • "Schalken the Painter," by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
  • "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner "
  • How Love Came to Professor Guildea," by Robert Hichens
  • "Born of Man and Woman," by Richard Matheson
  • "My Dear Emily," by Joanna Russ
  • "You Can Go Now," by Dennis Etchison
  • "Three Days," by Tanith Lee
  • "Good Country People," by Flannery O' Connor
  • "Mackintosh Willy," by Ramsey Campbell
  • "The Jolly Corner," by Henry James
• PART III: A Fabulous Formless Darkness
  • "Smoke Ghost," by Fritz Leiber
  • "Seven American Nights," by Gene Wolfe
  • "The Signal Man," by Charles Dickens
  • "Crouch End," by Stephen King
  • "Night-Side," by Joyce Carol Oates
  • "Seaton's Aunt," by Walter de la Mare
  • "Clara Militch," by Ivan Turgenev
  • "The Repairer of Reputations," by Robert W. Chambers
  • "The Beckoning Fair One," by Oliver Onions
  • "What Was It?," by Fitz-James O'Brien
  • "The Beautiful Stranger," by Shirley Jackson
  • "The Damned Thing," by Ambrose Bierce
  • "Afterward," by Edith Wharton
  • "The Willows," by Algernon Blackwood
  • "The Asian Shore," by Thomas M. Disch
  • "The Hospice," by Robert Aickman
  • "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts," by Philip K. Dick