E. F. Benson: The Outcast and Other Dark Tales

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Mike Ashley [ed.] - E. F. Benson: The Outcast and Other Dark Tales (British Library, 2020)

Sandra Gómez

Mike Ashley - Introduction

Dummy on a Dahabeah
A Winter Morning
Between the Lights
The Thing in the Hall
The Passenger
The Light in the Garden
The Outcast
The Top Landing
The Face
The Corner House
By the Sluice
Pirates
The Secret Garden
The Flint Knife
The Bath Chair
The Dance
Billy Comes Through

Story Sources

Blurb:

By a selection of disturbing details it is not very difficult to induce in a reader an uneasy frame of mind which, carefully worked up, paves the way for terror.' - E. F. Benson

A grisly spirit turns travelling companion for the unwitting passenger of a London bus; a repulsive neighbour returns from the grave, rejected by the very earth; an innocuous back garden becomes the stage for a nightmare encounter with druidic sacrifice.

From deep in the British Library vaults emerges a new selection of E. F. Benson's most innovative, spine-tingling and satisfyingly dark 'spook stories'. Complete with an introduction exploring the fascinating story of Benson's life, and including the never-before-republished story 'Billy Comes Through', this volume hails the chilling return of an experimental master to whom writers of supernatural fiction have long been indebted.

Seven from the ghost story collections published within Benson's lifetime, four from Jack Adrian's The Flint Knife, the rest from miscellaneous sources including one each from Eve, Tatler and The Story-Teller magazines.

The Top Landing: (Eve, 7 June 1922). Romney Marshes. Dr. Horst leaves the house to his colleague, Mrs Ayton, on condition she continues the experiments in spirit raising that drove him to suicide.

The Secret Garden: (Final Edition, 1940). "He was dressed in black and he wore a cape the right wing of which, as he passed, he threw across his chest, over his left shoulder ..." Author's unvarnished account of a ghost he glimpsed crossing the grass at Lamb House, as also witnessed by a guest, the vicar. Mike Ashley informs us the episode inspired Benson's grisly The Flint Knife.

A Winter Morning: (Six Common Things, 1893). Christmas anti-cheer. Why, twenty years on from his infant son's death in a riding accident, the widower cherishes a block of cue chalk. Benson had a flair for the superbly miserable.

The Passenger: (Pearsons, March 1917). London, WWI during the blackout. Ghost of a messy 'suicide' haunts the top deck of a West End bus.

TBC