Product Description

Aickman pulled out all the stops for this late entry into the Fontana GS series. Rareties such as Whitehead's "Lips" and Vernon Lee's "Oke of Oakhurst" plus weird tales by Priestley and George Moore?!?!!? Whoa, what a wild ride.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6646156 in Books
• Published on: 1970
• Binding: Map

Customer Reviews

Not the best collection in this great series
Through the 1970s, Fontana published a remarkable skein of ghost story collections, piloted by R. Aikman and later by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, no mean supernatural authors themselves. Some of the paperbacks in this series, which winds its way up to the "20th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories" are now collectors' items and worth over a hundred dollars apiece.

Robert Aickman selected a languorous, rather humid collection of stories for this sixth book in the series. Characters fret and swan about for the longest time before a ghost appears--if indeed, it does appear. The editor could never be accused of selecting shabbily-written tales for his book, but these particular stories, with one exception, are atmospheric rather than frightening

These are the stories in the 6th Fontana Book:

"Clarimonde (La Morte Amoureuse)" by Théophile Gautier--Théophile Gautier (1811 - 1872), a major poet, novelist, and critic of 19th-century France, was a leading exponent of art for art's sake. This rather long tale of a priest who falls in love with a vampire is exactly that. It certainly sets the tone for the rest of this book.

"The Grey Ones" by J.B. Priestley--A mordant tale of an alien conspiracy and the man who discovers that his brother-in-law is probably not human. Many of us probably have felt the same way at one time or another.

"The Door in the Wall" by H.G. Wells--A young boy discovers a paradisiacal realm behind a door in a wall (yes, it is a green door). He returns to the mundane world, then spends the rest of his life searching for that magical door. This story is loaded with pathos and has a surprising twist at its end.

"Priscilla and Emily Lofft" by George Moore--Irish author and friend of Vernon Lee (see "Oke of Okehurst" below) writes of twin sisters separated by death. Emily returns from Priscilla's funeral but cannot get on with her own life until she determines what her sister was trying to tell her on her deathbed.

"Sorworth Place" by Russell Kirk--This is one of conservative pundit Russell Kirk's less ravingly Catholic tales, although it involves a noble sacrifice to keep a woman from the clutches of her dead husband.

"Where Their Fire is not Quenched" by May Sinclair--A really awful little story of a woman who is punished after death for having an affair with a married man. Adulterers beware!

"Oke of Okehurst" by Vernon Lee--Late Victorian feminist Vernon Lee wrote more than forty books, in a broad range of genres, including fiction, history, aesthetics, and travel literature. "Oke of Okehurst" is one of her most collected ghost stories but it does take a rather indolent approach to its climax, which might or might not involve a phantom.

"The Lips" by Henry S. Whitehead--Quite a shocking contrast to the previous stories. The captain of a blackbirder is cursed by one of the slaves he sells in the Danish West Indies. Editor Aikman finally decided to wake his readers up and punch them in the gut with this last story in his collection.