Robert Phillips - Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories

[dem bones]

Robert Phillips (ed.) - The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (Robinson, 1991: originally , Carroll & Graf, 1989, as Triumph of the Night)

Sir Stanley Spencer The Resurrection, Cookham.

Robert Phillips - Introduction

Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover
Graham Greene - A Little Place Off the Edgware
Joyce Carol Oates - The Others
Dylan Thomas - The Followers
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Louis Auchincloss - The Prison Window
Walter de la Mare - Seaton’s Aunt
George Mackay Brown - Andrina
Barry N. Malzberg - Away
Muriel Spark - The Portobello Road
John Updike - The Indian
Denton Welch - Full Circle
Lynne Sharon Schwartz - Sound Is Second Sight
Jean Rhys - I Used to Live Here Once
Henry James - The Jolly Corner
Elizabeth Spencer - First Dark
Peter Taylor - Missing Person
Gertrude Atherton - The Bell in the Fog
Howard Lewis Russell - The Wedding Cake Couple
Shirley Jackson - The Daemon Lover
Virginia Woolf - A Haunted House
Mavis Gallant - Up North
Tennessee Williams - The Mysteries of the Joy Rio
William Goyen - Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt
E. M. Forster - The Celestial Omnibus
Edith Wharton - Afterward
Truman Capote - Miriam

Notes on the Authors

Blurb:
"One of the best anthologies of the year" - The Observer
Haunted houses and demon lovers. Children's visions and anxious states of mind, revenge, guilt, and betrayal from beyond are the themes of the modern ghost story as brilliantly explored by some of the century's finest writers.

These short masterpieces of the supernatural will linger in your imagination. This enthralling collection takes the reader on a thrilling tour of the best in 20th century spectral literature.

Another recent market find, slowly creeping up the 'to read' list. Beautiful choice of cover artwork, but ... wait, what's this? "high literary talent". Trendy pretentious yuppie crap!

Robert Phillips' posho selection took quite a hammering from Andy Sawyer in the Ghost Story Society Newsletter #7 (March, 1991), the gist of his criticism being that, just because you're a literary great, it doesn't necessarily follow that you can pen a decent supernatural tale. "Yes, Virginia Woolf did write a ghost story. Well, a ghost prose-poem. And it's not very good, but she's a Great Writer, isn't she?"

Be that as it may, in my humble, there's some absolutely brilliant stuff in here (Green, Capote, Bowen, Jackson, Gilman, Atherton, de la Mare, Brown, Spark, etc), but my spidy sense tells me that it's the ones were not already very familiar with from several previous anthologies could prove hard going.

Maybe once I'm done with the magnificent Eleventh Black Book Of Horror ...

[pbsplatter]

This variant is even better--it looks an awful lot like the Halloween III: Season of the Witch poster!