Ostensibly a good idea, certainly worth commissioning, probably worth publishing, definitely not going to set the world on fire. If Mike Ashley can't put together an anthology that enthuses fans of the weird then it's time for the British Library to admit that this particular strand of its republishing arm has run out of steam.
The proposition is that an interest in the occult can be inherited. On the evidence presented here, that seems to have happened in some instances. Yes, the descendants of Captain Marryat, Sheridan le Fanu, Dickens etc also tried their hand at horror. However, with perhaps one or two exceptions, they werem't very good at it. There is a reason that Ashley has placed Captain Marryat and his daughter first in the collection. Florence Marryat was actually better at the genre than her father and produced at least one novel, The Blood of the Vampire (1897), which may well be an unjustly overlooked classic.
The others, sadly, are mostly pish. The concept was always weak, it transpires, because of the 'famous' originals recruited only le Fanu is primarily known for horror. Dickens, Hawthorne and Conrad Aitken all wrote occasional horror, but the product was only ever interesting because of their better-known other work. Ashley's notes are always interesting. Most of the stories are not. My tip for weird enthusiasts - go straight to Blood of the Vampire. I gather it's a Penguin Classic.
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