Description

Following the success of Handheld Press’s 2019 best-selling anthology Womens Weird, British Weird is a new anthology of classic Weird short fiction by British writers, first published between the 1890s and the 1930s. Embracing the famous and the undeservedly obscure, this collection – curated by James Machin, author of Palgrave Gothic’s Weird Fiction in Britain, 1880-1939 – assembles stories to thrill, entertain, and chill. Featured stories include:
‘Man-Size in Marble’ by Edith Nesbit (1893)
‘No-Man’s Land’, John Buchan (1900)
‘The Willows’, by Algernon Blackwood
‘The Man Who Went Too Far’, by E F Benson (1912)
‘N’ by Arthur Machen (1934)
‘Mappa Mundi’ by Mary Butts (1937)
The collection also includes Mary Butts’ influential essay ‘Ghosties and Ghoulies’ (1933), on British supernatural writing.
Machin’s introduction describes the background for these excellent stories in the Weird tradition, and identifies their use of peculiarly British preoccupations in supernatural short fiction.

Publisher Review

Reviewed in The Washington Post, 28 October 2020, ''Classic stories, but also less familiar ones'