Terror by Gaslight
Description
Hardcover – Published in 1975 by W. H. Allen.
In another trip into the Victorian world of the macabre, Hugh Lamb has compiled more authentic tales of terror in Terror by Gaslight. Rare stories from the golden age of the supernatural have been coaxed from forgotten volumes and neglected authors. Among the many delights awaiting you within are A Dead Man’s Teeth and The Weird Woman. Enter The House of Strange Stories; look if you dare on The Basilisk; learn the secret of The Beckoning Hand and feel the gaze of The Invisible Eye.
Ranging from Haitian voodoo to London streets, from a sailing to the American plains, from New York to Norway, Terror by Gaslight is another superb collection of the best of Victorian terror. Grant Allen, S. Baring Gould, Andrew Lang, Erckman-Chatrian and Fitz James O’Brien are just a few of the fourteen masters of the macabre brought together in this classic anthology.
Join the Victorians in their world of terror—you won’t regret it—but make sure the doors are bolted first!
Contents
Foreword – Hugh Lamb
Purification – Robert Barr
The Beckoning Hand – Grant Allen
Nothing But the Truth – Rhoda Broughton
The Haunted House of Paddington – Charles Ollier
A Dreadful Night – Edwin Lester Arnold
The House of Strange Stories – Andrew Lang
The Invisible Eye – Erckmann-Chatrian
The Earth Draws – Jonas Lie
The Wondersmith – Fitz James O’Brien
The Basilisk – R. Murray Gilchrist
A Dead Man’s Teeth – S. Baring Gould
The Doomed Man – Dick Donovan
Kentucky’s Ghost – Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
The Weird Woman – Anonymous
Trivia
A memorial edition of this anthology was published in 2021 by Kingsbrook Publishing, containing 3 extra stories chosen from Hugh Lamb’s unused collections.
Praise
“This is the fourth collection editor Lamb has drawn from the horror literature of the era and unless you’re a connoisseur’s connoisseur, you will be unfamiliar with almost all of these fourteen short stories since only three have been previously anthologized elsewhere and the others have been out of print since they first surfaced. The only name you may recognize is that of Andrew Lang who of course is associated with another sphere. But no doubt there will be a continuing audience for rigidifying tales of the supernal.“
“These ‘More Victorian Tales of Terror’ by an expert anthologist in the field succeed extremely well. They are genuinely scary and haunting and they have not been previously anthologized to death. Indeed, most, if not all, of them will be unfamiliar to the general reader. There are 14 tales altogether with very different settings, from voodoo in Haiti, to the dark, fog-shrouded streets of London. In his introduction editor Lamb points out that in the very era in which Darwin and others were pressing the limits of science outwards there was also ‘an equivalent increase in reports of the supernatural…’
Not content with their real-life horrors (Jack the Ripper, cholera, poverty, etc.) the Victorians invented a galaxy of fictional terrors. This was the time of the Penny Dreadful, when ‘orrible murders were enjoyed in stage reenactments at the music hall, and a time when authors excelled themselves at producing a string of literary horrors.“
Publishers Weekly
February 1976
Other Editions
Paperback – Published in 2021 by Kingsbrook Publishing
Paperback – Published by Coronet in 1977
Hardcover – Published by Taplinger in 1976
