Basil Davenport - Tales Told In The Dark

[dem]

Basil Davenport (ed.) - Tales To Be Told In The Dark (Ballantine, 1960)

Richard Powers

Superb knee-weakeners by the horror masters

William Fryer Harvey - The Beast With Five Fingers
Stephen Hall - By One, By Two, By Three
Saki - Sredni Vashtar
Lord Dunsany - The Two Bottles Of Relish
Margaret Irwin - The Book
John Collier - Thus I Refute Beelzy
James Thurber - The Whip-Poor-Will
Arthur Machen - The White People
Lafcadio Hearn - Mujina
Saki - The Open Window
Basil Davenport - Two Anecdotes
Anon - The Closed Cabinet
Basil Davenport - The Closed Cabinet Retold

The Listing for Tales To Be Told In The Dark is taken from the undated Faber & Faber edition (above) which is the one I've seen - the Ballantine is almost certainly abridged. Davenport includes notes on all of the stories, many of which will be familiar (the Stephen Hall and Lord Dunsany horrors were revived by Herbert Van Thal for the Pan Horrors and the Saki brace turn up just about everywhere). The editor does a fine job but the final three items - especially the two versions of The Closed Cabinet (Victorian melodrama minus the drama) - are something of a waste. As E. F. Bleiler puts it: "Davenport, recognizing that The Closed Cabinet is cumbersome, badly plotted and barely intelligible, has shortened the narrative greatly and reworked the story. It was not worth the effort."

Davenport's books were reputedly ghosted by Albert Paul Blaustein