The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

[redbrain]

I think that I once owned every anthology to which this Fontana forum is devoted.

The Fighteners books seemed to me to infringe the Trades Descriptions Act - containing, as they did, very little that was genuinely fightening.

The Fontana Books of Great Horror Stories contained little that was really great.

The Tales of Terror series was very mixed - some were excellent, others puzzling, some a waste of time. In fact, they were so variable as not to seem a series at all.

But The Fontana Books of Great Ghost Stories really were great.

Unless someone beats me to it, I will start listing their contents in future posts.

[Calenture]

redbrain said:

The Fontana Books of Great Horror Stories contained little that was really great.

A very inferior series, I agree!

[redbrain]

The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1964) edited by Robert Aickman – the first in the series.

Here’s the contents:

Introduction – Robert Aickman

The Travelling Grave – L P Hartley

The Ghost Ship – Richard Middleton

Squire Toby’s Will – J. Sheridan le Fanu

The Voice in the Night – William Hope Hodgson

Three Miles Up – Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Rocking-horse Winner – D H Laurence

The Wendigo – Algernon Blackwood

The Crown Derby Plate – Marjorie Bowen

The Trains – Robert Aickman

The Old Nurse’s Story – Mrs Gaskell

Seaton’s Aunt – Walter de la Mare

Looking at the list now, it strikes me that it only does half of what it says on the tin. They’re great stories, but they’re by no means all ghost stories. The Voice in the Night is not even a supernatural story.

It also strikes me that there are rather a lot of much anthologised stories – but this was presumably less so when the book was first published in 1964.

A point of interest is that this anthology was the world’s first intimation as to who wrote Three Miles Up and The Trains. The two stories come from We Are for the Dark by Robert Aickman and Elizabeth Jane Howard. A peculiarity of that book is that it contains no attribution of authorship for the individual stories. We wouldn’t know who wrote the other stories in the book until the Tartarus Press editions of the two authors’ stories.

[weirdmonger]

redbrain said:

A peculiarity of that book is that it contains no attribution of authorship for the individual stories.

An early pre-cursor of NEMONYMOUS!

Actually the Fontana Ghost Anthologies are my favourite series that I intend to keep beyond my 90th birthday.
I remember at the time being pleased that the Chetwynd-Hayes edited volumes were (unexpectedly?) just as satisfying as the Robert Aickman ones.

[redbrain]

weirdmonger said:

redbrain said:

A peculiarity of that book is that it contains no attribution of authorship for the individual stories.

An early pre-cursor of NEMONYMOUS!

Kind of - except that the book (as a whole) is attributed to two authors. Which rather takes the nemonymatic shine from it.

[Calenture]

Sorry to put up an old post after being lazy, but while I'm scribbling something about The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories, I might as well take advantage of this thread to copy something from last year's Aickman thread.

The Trains by Robert Aickman: Margaret and Mimi lose their way while hiking in the Pennines. At a guest house a man tells them that the locals call this area the Quiet Valley. He also has a story to tell about a nearby house owned by the Roper family.

“Well, every time a train passes by Miss Roper’s house, someone leans out of a bedroom window and waves to it. It’s gone on for years. Every train, mark you. The house stands back from the line and the drivers couldn’t see exactly who it was, but it was someone in white and they all thought it was a girl. So they waved back. Every train. But the joke is it’s not a girl at all. It can’t be. It’s gone on too long. She can’t have been a girl for the last twenty years or so. It’s probably old Miss Roper herself.”

The Roper house is the only building the girls will pass in the next eight miles so it’s inevitable that they call there. The description of their journey across the moors under an overcast sky, with only the rapid passages of the trains travelling through deep cuttings leading to or from tunnels through the hills, is intense and moody. I thought it wasn’t dissimilar to the journey of the girl in Machen’s The White People.

The Roper house itself with its walls and doors blackened with grime from passing trains is grim and forbidding; and the interior is unforgettable.

A tall butler named Beech shows them into the presence of Wendley Roper. It was Wendley’s father Joseph (‘Wide Joe’) Roper who had spent his life working for the railways and had built the house. They’re invited to stay the night and are shown their room, which is long like a railway carriage, with barred windows at the end. It occurs to them that this might be the room where the late Miss Roper had waved to the trains.

Aware of the intense sexual chemistry building between Mimi and Wendley, Margaret goes back to her room and sees “a figure which seemed hastily to be drawing back from her and then to retreat through one of the big panelled doors.”

Most of this very long story would be ideally suited to TV dramatisation. The wide moor with isolated houses and even more isolated people is a favourite setting of the low-budget drama, lending itself easily to any period from the Thirties to the Sixties.

The problem that I had with it was that such a long piece finally ended with such apparently senseless and unnecessary mystery. The introduction of a gender-bending butler seemed quite clumsy, as if the mood of ‘BBC drama’ had abruptly changed to garish spaghetti-horror. The idea that Miss Roper had been locked up because she knew a secret that was “something to do with the railway” seemed desperate and a bit daft, almost as if Aickman was trying to introduce some mystery. And why the hell are Mimi’s pockets full of old railway tickets after she has (presumably) been raped by Wendley? I thought these baffling details actually detracted from the story, only obfuscated what is otherwise a marvellously evocative and sustained piece of writing. If anyone has any other suggestions, please let’s hear them!

[dem bones]

Robert Aickman (ed.) - The Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories (Fontana, 1964)

Introduction - Robert Aickman
L. P. Hartley - The Travelling Grave
Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship
J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Squire Toby's Will
William Hope Hodgson - The Voice in The Night
Elizabeth Jane Howard - Three Miles Up
D. H. Lawrence - The Rocking Horse Winner
Algernon Blackwood - The Wendigo
Marjory Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate
Robert Aickman - The Trains
Mrs. Gaskell - The Old Nurses Story
Walter de la Mare - Seaton's Aunt


It's probably fair to say that this series got off to a stronger start than the companion "Fontana Horror"s, and there are a few from the list which could have been included in the Barnard/ Danby-edited collections.

Aickman selections show a bias toward literary accomplishment. He even argues in the introduction that only 40 ghost stories are any good, but don't be put off. even if, like me, you sometimes marvel at some of his choices as the series progressed, it's a super series, and his introductions are always worth reading. Blackwood's Wendigo takes a Native American legend of a colossal demon and brings it vividly to life. Squire Toby's Will charts the history of the dead man's feuding sons and finds Le Fanu on his best form. For sheer horror, Hodgson's The Voice In The Night takes some beating as two castaways metamorphose into ... something less appealing. Even the quieter stories pack a considerable wallop, notably Three Miles Up which ends on a note of sheer existentialist dread.

L. P. Hartley - The Travelling Grave: "So you didn't know that I collected coffins."

Dick Munt has recently returned home from abroad where he's acquired the prize exhibit in his macabre collection - an animated coffin capable of hunting down a man and crushing him to nothingness. How can he put it to the test?

Munt invites three male guests to spend Sunday with him at Lowlands and engages them in a game of hide and seek. One of the party, Hugh Curtis, he's delighted to learn, is alone in the world and none but the other men know he's here ...

Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship: Fairfield, the most haunted village in England is nonetheless a peaceful place where the ghosts and humans co-exist in harmony ... until the Jubilee celebrations of 1897 when Captain Roberts' spectral pirate galleon turns up in the garden behind The Fox & Grapes. The ship is well stocked with rum and soon all the phantoms have become anti-social binge-drinkers.

Elizabeth Jane Howard - Three Miles Up: Clifford and John decide to spend a holiday on the canals despite neither of them having the least experience of boating. They soon find themselves hopelessly unsuited to life on the waterways and argue incessantly until one day they see a young girl asleep on the bank and decide to invite her along. She introduces herself as Sharon (they maybe should have asked how she spells her name) and proves to be "a friendly but uncommunicative creature", ultra-efficient and not given to outbursts of temper. Both men fall for her but things improve between them until they arrive at a junction which branches into three tributaries, only two of which are shown on their map ...

This first appeared in the We Are For The Dark collaboration with Robert Aickman and although he credits Three Miles Up as "mostly" Howards, there are some touches that seem to me to be recognisably his work. Not that it matters who wrote what. This is as good a ghost story I've ever read.

William Hope Hodgson - The Voice In The Night: In the darkness of the North Pacific a becalmed schooner encounters a survivor of the missing The Albatross. The man begs food for his sweetheart, who is gravely ill on a nearby island, but refuses to come aboard and fetch it and shies away from the light. Moved despite themselves, Will and George lower him provisions in a box whereupon he rows off thanking them profusely. As neither can sleep they wait up and three hours later they again hear his oars and thin, weedy cry. In return for their charity and by way of explanation for his behaviour he and his wife have decided to share their story of the appalling fate that has befallen they and the crew of The Albatross .....

it's not a ghost story (I'm not sure about The Travelling Grave or The Trains either) but ... you'll probably feel like dousing yourself in fungicidal wash after you've read it.

My type of generic plot outline doesn't lend itself at all well to the next story any better than it does Three Miles Up, The Trains or anything that isn't a man versus giant ants story but here goes:

Walter De La Mare - Seaton's Aunt: The desperately unhappy life of Arthur Seaton as recalled by Withers who, while never quite finding it in himself to like him, was still the closest thing he ever made to a friend.
They are thrown together as boarders at Gummeridge's school where orphan Seaton is bullied by the other boys (Withers included) and gets by with bribes of sweets and treats for the worst of his tormentors, his guardian aunt being keen to see him burn his inheritance. If the terms are an ordeal, the holidays are a nightmare as he returns home to the clutches of the terrible Mrs. Seaton. Somehow Arthur extracts a promise from Withers that he'll spend the next hols as his guest - and holds him to it. This is Withers' first of three encounters with the evil old bat, each of them more subtly horrifying than the last, and during his stay Seaton opens up to him. As persecution complexes go ..... The house, he claims, is infested with ghosts, and she's not only in league with them but Satan himself. "Being spied on - every blessed thing you do and think ... she sucks you dry ... and that's what she'll do for me."

Withers considers him hopelessly pathetic and neurotic and about the only sympathy he can muster is to admit that maybe Mrs. Seaton's constant snipes and swipes at him can't be doing much for Arthur's self-esteem. Back at school he studiously avoids him and it's not until they've left Gummeridges that their paths next cross, a chance meeting outside a jewellers in the Strand where a bizarrely dressed Arthur is shopping for an engagement ring as, incredibly, he's found a girlfriend. Withers being his only male acquaintance, he invites him back to the gloomy old house to meet Alice, his bride-to-be. Despite the passing years old Mrs. Seaton seems younger - clearly having a new target to persecute does wonders for her heath - and the lovers get the full works. She even gets to show off her piano skills, serenading them with a disgusting recital of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. It's clear that the insubstantial Alice just isn't going to last the pace. And besides, she's got dark hair.

"Consider, Mr. Withers: dark hair, dark eyes, dark cloud, dark night, dark vision, dark death, dark grave, dark DARK!"

Once again, Withers is grateful to get away. The dreaded wedding invite never arrives (salving his guilt over never having thought to send a message of congratulations) until, acting on impulse, he again makes that awful train journey with no idea why he's going to such trouble over a fellow he's never viewed with anything much more than indifference. Arthur isn't home but his Aunt is and the years have finally caught up with her. She's blind and the sarcasm in which she veiled her loathing has dried up. When she mistakes Withers for Arthur and starts ordering him about he decides that this isn't a day for gallantry and runs from the house having learned that, inevitably, no marriage took place. Enquiring after Seaton in the village he learns that Arthur won't be marrying anybody. Because he's dead.

You can see why Aickman had to pick this - it's so him. It can certainly be read as a ghost story but that's only one option. I've seen it included in vampire bibliographies, or you can dispense with the "supernatural" angle altogether and still appreciate it. This story is just great at being Seaton's Aunt if that makes any sense? No I didn't think so .....

Let's move on as the next one is much easier to deal with because its:

Marjorie Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate: Miss Martha Pym, sixty year old antique dealer, has always wanted to see a ghost, but maybe not as much as she'd like to locate the one piece missing from her beloved china tea set. Staying with friends on the Essex flats, talk turns to Hartleys, the house where she purchased the incomplete set at auction thirty years ago. Hartleys is now owned by the reclusive and reputedly eccentric Miss Lefain. Perhaps she'll know the whereabouts of the missing plate?

A straightforward, gentle-but-creepy ghost story and very restrained for Bowen. I much prefer the just plain nasty Kecksies but as with everything else so far in the book it's an excellently crafted piece of work.

[cw67q]

This was a great start to a classic series of anthologies, although after vols 2 or 3 I'll bet Aickman was wishing he'd kepy quiet about there only being thirty or forty "great" ghost stories in english (doh!).

Only two stories were relatively weak selections, both from favourite authors:

I couldn't agree more with demonik on "the crown derby plate", it wasn't until I reread this as part of the Kecksies collection that I appreciated it at all, but the title story from that great little Arkham House collection would have been a much bettre choice.

"the Travelling Grave" is a fun read, I can't help but visualise the main characters as peter Lorre and Boris Karloff, but it is a poor introduction to Hartley and a very odd choice with which to kick off a collection of ghost stories. There would be a fair few contenders for better choice IMHO e.g. "A Visitor from Down Under", or "A Change of Ownership". If Aickman wanted to present Hartley sharp wittiness then the wonderful "Three, or Four, for Dinner" would have ticked that box while racheting up the sinister-o-meter somewhat from "the Travelling Grave". "Three, or Four" has improved for me on every rereading becomeing both darker and funnier on each visit. The subtlety of Hartley's jokes and shudders comes out better on a second, or subsequent look.

- Chris

[dem bones]

Mar 1, 2010 15:22:41 GMT cw67q said:

This was a great start to a classic series of anthologies, although after vols 2 or 3 I'll bet Aickman was wishing he'd kepy quiet about there only being thirty or forty "great" ghost stories in english (doh!).

- Chris

Roald Dahl expressed similar sentiments in his introduction to his uninspired Book Of Ghost Stories. the critical consensus has it that the series went to sh*t when Chetwynd-Hayes took over (according to RCH, Fontana dispensed with Aickman's services due to his reluctance to include contemporary authors). not being particularly bothered over whether or not my ghost and horror stories constitute great literature (as long as they don't bore me, i'm happy) i have to say that, for me, far from ruining the series, RCH and his stable of moderns actually livened things up as you never knew quite what to expect. For all their critical acclaim, Aickman's selections owe much to Cynthia Asquith's Ghost Books and the Centuries and Mammoth's of the 'thirties. that's not to say there's anything "bad" about them, but as anthologies they weren't particularly innovative.

But then i love the Frighteners books too so what do i know?

[Johnlprobert]

L. P. Hartley - The Travelling Grave. As others have said on this thread (and doubtless elsewhere) for the opening story in a collection of 'Great Ghost Stories' this is a very odd choice indeed. Cruel, inventive (were there really contraptions like thsi? Did LPH come up with the idea himself?) and far more a horror story than a ghostly tale (which it isn't at all). I did really like it, but I can understand ghost fans being a bit miffed!

Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship. And ghost fans looking forward to a bit of good old fashioned spookiness were likely to be have disappointed by this light-hearted slight surreal piece as well. I do love the idea of a ghost pirate ship stranded in a field and surrounded by ghost fish though

J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Squire Toby's Will. At last something scary! I've only just read this in Madam Crowl's Ghost so here's my note from that: Squire Toby Marston dies, leaving all his estate to the younger of his two sons - 'Handsome Charlie'. Ugly hunchbacked elder brother Scroope (there's a Dickensian name if I ever heard one) gets nothing but after a nasty fall renders Handsome Charlie into Limping, Wandering the Grounds and Decidedly Bitter Charlie, he starts to be visited in his dreams by a strange dog-like creature (the story's scariest bit if you ask me) that points the way to a new will that left everything to Scroope. What's Charlie to do, other than get haunted a lot, especially after Scroope kicks the bucket as well.

[Johnlprobert]

William Hope Hodgson - The Voice in The Night. This is the one that I'm sure everyone knows by now was the basis for the Japanese 1963 horror picture 'Attack of the Mushroom People', aka 'Matango - Fungus of Terror'. That film's nowhere near as bad as one might think from those titles but this source story is a classic. I'd still argue that having fungoid growths appearing all over you is more horror story than ghostly tale but that's a minor point. Horrific and tragic - well done Mr WHH!

[dem bones]

Le Fanu loved his hunchbacks, that's for sure. Squire Toby's Will made such an impression on me that i'm loathe to reread it for fear it will ruin a beautiful memory. Nothing wrong with The Travelling Grave apart from the obvious, and The Ghost Ship is charming - Wordsworth would do well to publish a Middleton selection. i'm with you on Hodgson, too. Not sure its the best thing he ever wrote but i love Voice In The Night above anything else i've read of his. it's like Aickman was going for a Ghost/ Horror/ Strange Story compilation with the debut.

[Johnlprobert]

Elizabeth Jane Howard - Three Miles Up. This is a weird one and it doesn't surprise me that it was in a book alongside Aickman stories as it feels very 'him', right down to the 'disturbingly scary but I can't quite put my finger on why' ending. Apparently it was the subject of a BBC adaptation only a few years ago but I haven't seen it.

D. H. Lawrence - The Rocking Horse Winner. There was a film made of this as well. The story of the lad whose rocking horse gives him the Derby winners is fun but I've found critical analyses on the web that read all kinds of 'frustrated desire' into it, especially on the part of the boy wanting to take the place of his father. Not sure if I got all that but it's not a bad little tale

[Johnlprobert]

Algernon Blackwood - The Wendigo. My first Blackwood! (Sorry to all those who thought I was better read). And it was so good I had to stop reading it and then start again, aloud, as part of Lady P's bedtime reading. One of the best depictions of the terror of the great outdoors I have ever read, so much so that the Wendigo itself is almost unnecessary, so thoroughly unfriendly and yet at the same time terrifyingly inviting does Blackwood make the landscape. Really, really good. There's a copy of his 'Best Ghost Stories' on the shelf so that's gone on the imminent reading pile as well now.

Marjory Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate. Getting to the end of this I couldn't help but think of Barry Humphries, even though its ghost is only mistaken for a woman. Fairly straightforward stuff but at least there actually is a ghost in this one.

Has anyone considered that Aickman might have been asked to put together a book of 'classic weird stories' and then at the last minute Fontana changed the title to 'Great Ghost Stories' to increase marketability?

[Dr Strange]

Jun 18, 2010 7:13:53 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Algernon Blackwood - The Wendigo. My first Blackwood! (Sorry to all those who thought I was better read). And it was so good I had to stop reading it and then start again, aloud, as part of Lady P's bedtime reading. One of the best depictions of the terror of the great outdoors I have ever read, so much so that the Wendigo itself is almost unnecessary, so thoroughly unfriendly and yet at the same time terrifyingly inviting does Blackwood make the landscape. Really, really good. There's a copy of his 'Best Ghost Stories' on the shelf so that's gone on the imminent reading pile as well now.

Then you absolutely must read "The Willows", which is a (sort of) companion piece to "The Wendigo". Perhaps a bit more subtle, but every bit as good (actually better, IMO). In a way, I am actually quite envious - it's very rare for me to read anything new that comes close to the impact of some of these old classics.