Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories
by Algernon Blackwood
By turns bizarre, unsettling, spooky, and sublime, Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories showcases nine incomparable stories from master conjuror Algernon Blackwood. Evoking the uncanny spiritual forces of Nature, Blackwood's writings all tread the nebulous borderland between fantasy, awe, wonder, and horror. Here, Blackwood displays his best and most disturbing work, including The Willows, which H.P. Lovecraft singled out as "the single finest weird tale in literature"; The Wendigo; The Insanity of Jones; and Sand.
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Table of Contents
Introduction by S.T. Joshi
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Text
Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House
The Willows
The Insanity of Jones
Ancient Sorceries
The Man Who Found Out
The Wendigo
The Glamour of the Snow
The Man Whom the Trees Loved
Sand
Explanatory Notes
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Paperback Edition
400 pages. Printed card cover.
ISBN: 9780142180150
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood’s genius there can be no dispute; for no one has ever approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences.”
H.P. Lovecraft
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About the Author
The late Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869 - 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi called his work "more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".
H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Blackwood: "He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere." His powerful story "The Willows," which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only "foremost of all" Blackwood's tales but the best "weird tale" of all time.
He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this.
