The Unknown - Algernon Blackwood

 Another excellent collection from the sadly defunct Handheld Press.   The idea here is to demonstrate Blackwood's range beyond the usual suspects, 'Wendigo' and 'The Willows'.   Editor Henry Batholomew four key topics - Canada, Mountain, Reincarnation and Imagination - and illustrates each with three examples, an essay or article, and two short stories.

I was especially taken with the Reincarnation section, which firstly demonstrates how Blackwood came to view the topic, then follows with 'The Insanity of Jones' from 1907 and 'The Tarn of Sacrifice' from 1921.   'The Insanity of Jones' was my favourite in the book, a tale of ancient revenge carried out in the present.   The third wheel as it were, the spirit who sucks the meek clerk Jones into his act of revenge, was truly scary.   I would also single out the story 'By Water' in the final Imagination section, largely because it is the story Blackwood talks about writing in the essay 'The Genesis of Ideas' which immediately precedes it.

Highly recommended.

British Weird - ed. James Machin

 It's a shame Handheld Press went out of business, because this is a nicely-presented anthology, part of a series which has decided to venture off the usual track in order to introduce to fans of the genre some long forgotten classics.   Here, for example, we have Arthur Machen's 'N', which happens to be the starting point for Alan Moore's marvellous Great When which I reviewed here earlier this year.   In the same vein is 'Mappa Mundi' by Mary Butts, who was an occultist contemporary of Machen and Aleister Crowley.   Editor James Machin has also included an essay by Butts from 1933 in which she has some startling things to say about alternative realities and her personal experience thereof.   I had never comes across John Buchan's weird fiction before but must find more of it.   I'm not particularly a fan of E F Benson or Edith Nesbit but they certainly merit inclusion here.   I am a big fan of Algernon Blackwood and thoroughly enjoyed 'The Willows', which I had not come across before.

Machin's introduction is excellent.   I note he has written a book on Weird Fiction in Britain 1880-1939.   That sounds like exactly my cup of tea.