Who Wrote These?

[lemming13]

Okay, time to pick people's brains again (an unsavoury habit, I know, but sooo tasty). I downloaded a book for my Kindle from the Internet Archive. The title is Strange Secrets, and it was published by R F Fenno and Company in New York, though I don't know when. The contents list has no author attribution, though there are handwritten notes against three titles. In spite of serious transcription errors (unusual in a title uploaded by Harvard Library) I have enjoyed reading them so far and I was hoping you could help me to identify the missing authors. Here's the list:
The Secret of Swalecliffe Castle
The Secret of the Mine
The Secret of Calverley Court
The Secret of Cousin Geoffrey's Chamber
The Secret of Goresthorpe Grange - Conan Doyle
The Box with the Iron (Unidentifiable word, sorry)
The Veiled Portrait - J Grant
The Ghost of Lawford Hall
The Spectre Hand - J Grant
A Coachful of Ghosts
George Venn and the Ghost
The Mystery In Daffodil Terrace
Why New Homes Are Haunted
A Very Queer Inn.

Any takers? I'm fairly sure of a couple, but some I never came across before.

[dem]

can help with some. The book was originally published as Strange Secrets: By Arthur Conan-Doyle & Others by Chatto & Windus in 1889, and some of the contributors include;

James Grant - The Spectre Hand
James Grant - The Veiled Portrait
Florence Marryat - Box With The Iron Clamps
Dutton Cook - George Venn And The Ghost
Percy Fitzgerald - The Mystery In Daffodil Terrace
M. B. Archer - A Very Queer Inn
F. Milford - Swalecliffe Castle

Pretty certain that's the same James Grant who wrote The Phantom Regiment, and Florence Marryat was a prolific ghost story writer in her day. Don't know about the others! Oh, and at least some of the stories originated in periodicals like London Society.

[killercrab]

Any help?

The secret of Swalecliffe castle, by F. Milford.--The secret of the mine, by F. Talbot.--The secret of Calverley court, by G. Parsons.--The secret of Cousin Geoffrey's chamber, by the Hon. Mrs. H. Clifford.--The secret of Goresthorpe grange, by A. C. Doyle.--The box with the iron clamps, by F. Marryrat.--The veiled portrait, by J. Grant.--The ghost of Lawford hall, by W. Thornbury.--The spectre hand, by J. Grant.--A coachful of ghosts, by E. C. Price.--George Venn and the ghost, by D. Cook.--The mystery in Daffodil terrace, by Fitzgerald.--Why new houses are haunted, by E. Keith.--A very queer inn, by M. B. Archer

[lemming13]

Much obliged, as ever, by the prompt information. The Box With the Iron enigma particularly annoyed me, being listed in my scanned version as Iron [*7*%^] - I mean, some of the erratic words have a letter or two to help you guess, but what can anyone make of that, except an extraordinarily rude Victorian writer?

[dem]

I've a very feeble word-scanning programme which purportedly "Transforms page images into formatted pages .... using Optical Character Recognition". Rarely use it because, quite simply, by the time it takes to make all the corrections it would have been easier to type it out myself. Evidently whoever scanned Strange Secrets didn't bother with the tiresome clean-up operation and just went for the "document ready" option which is why so much of it is unintelligible. It's a shame because it looks like it would make for a decent read. Had not heard of the book before you mentioned it, so thank you for adding to our bibliography.

[lemming13]

Yes, I've found one or two who didn't bother cleaning up. Strange Secrets did surprise me, though, since it was uploaded by Harvard University Library, which is trying to put all its public domain volumes on the net. Thanks to them I now have a terrific collection of Dumas novels, as well as Blackwood's The Wolves of God and Sax Rohmer's Tales of Secret Egypt, all of which are perfect. I suspect students are working on the collection, and some are more perfectionist than others.