Mary Danby (ed.) – Realms of Darkness

[ripper]

£1 for a Wordsworth has got to be a bargain, Dem. This Crawford collection had me in a quandary. I already had all but 3 of the stories in other anthologies, so at the time I skipped it for something else. I haven't seen those final 3 stories in any other collection, so I am still in the market for a copy when I see one.

[cauldronbrewer]

Sept 23, 2015 9:02:31 GMT dem said:

Must read The Dead Smile again as I've a feeling Seabury Quinn ripped it off for his The Jest Of Warburg Tantuval.

Indeed, but I prefer Quinn's ending (and that's one of my favorite de Grandin stories).

[Michael Connolly]

Jun 19, 2015 6:29:48 GMT dem said:

Mary Danby (ed.) – Realms of Darkness (Octopus, 1985)

Introduction – Christopher Lee

Martin Amis – Denton’s Death
Anon – In the Slaughteryard
Anon – The Dead Man of Varley Grange
Robert Arthur – Footsteps Invisible
Denys Val Baker – The Potter’s Art
E. F. Benson – The Thing in the Hall
Ambrose Bierce – The Boarded Window
Robert Bloch – The Mannikin
Anthony Boucher – They Bite
Elizabeth Bowen – The Demon Lover
Marjorie Bowen – The Crown Derby Plate
Christianna Brand – The Kite
John Dickson Carr – Blind Man’s Hood
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Door
Agatha Christie – The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael
Roger Clarke – Blackberries
Adrian Cole – The Moon Web
Frederick Cowles – The Horror of Abbot’s Grange
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Roald Dahl – Pig
Mary Danby – Robbie
August Derleth – The Extra Passenger
William Croft Dickinson – The Witch’s Bone
Amelia B. Edwards – The Four-Fifteen Express
A. E. Ellis – The Haunted Haven
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The Sexton’s Adventure
John Galt – The Black Ferry
Catherine Gleason – Friends
Winston Graham – The Circus
Davis Grubb – Where the Woodbine Twineth
Willis Hall – Waking or Sleeping
L. P. Hartley – Someone in the Lift
Dorothy K. Haynes – The Peculiar Case of Mrs. Grimmond
C. D. Heriot – The Trapdoor
Patricia Highsmith – The Day of Reckoning
George Hitchcock – An Invitation to the Hunt
Geoffrey Household – Taboo
Washington Irving – Guests from Gibbet Island
Margaret Irwin – The Book
W. W. Jacobs – The Three Sisters
M. R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House.
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
Stephen King – The Reaper’s Image
Sterling E. Lanier – Soldier Key
Kay Leith – The Sanguivites
L. A. Lewis – Hybrid
Frank Belknap Long – The Black Druid
F. G. Loring – The Tomb of Sarah
Agnes MacLeod – The Skeleton Hand
W. Somerset Maugham – The Man from Glasgow
Guy de Maupassant – The Hostelry
Edmund Mitchell – The Phantom of the Lake
Arthur Morrison – The Thing in the Upper Room
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
J. B. Priestley – The Demon King
Bill Pronzini – Peekaboo
Tony Richards – The Black Lake
Flavia Richardson – The Red Turret
Agnes Short – Intercom
Henry Slesar – Examination Day
Barnard Stacey – The Devil’s Ape
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Terry Tapp – Polish the Lid
Alan Temperley – Evening Flight
Paul Theroux – Dengué Fever
Christine Campbell Thomson – Message for Margie
Rosemary Timperley – Harry
H. Russell Wakefield – Lucky’s Grove
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm
Elizabeth Walter – The Tibetan Box
H. G. Wells – The Sea-Raiders
Simon West (August Derleth) – A Thin Gentleman with Gloves
Dennis Wheatley – The Case of the Haunted Chateau

Mar 8, 2015 11:04:20 GMT ripper said:

Does anyone know if the other anthos edited by Mary Danby such as Realm of Darkness, Chamber of Horrors etc also take stories from the Fontanas like the 65s do?

Finally got a copy after all these years. By my reckoning, its only 13 or 14 of these stories didn't feature in the Fontana ghost/ horror/ tales of terror series'.

On balance, Realms of Darkness seems to be the best of Mary Danby's five bumper collections. Authors from the James List (Frederick Cowles, William Croft Dickinson, C. D. Heriot, F. G. Loring and others) are well represented.

From Margaret Irwin's "The Book": "Authors must all be filthy-minded; they probably wrote what they dared not express in their lives. ... He [the main character] saw Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte as two unpleasant examples
of spinsterhood; the one as a prying,sub-acid busybody in everyone else's flirtations,the other as a raving craving maenad seeking self-immolation on the altar of her frustrated passions." This makes me wonder about Margaret Irwin.

[dem]

It's my guess that Mary Danby intended the original stories spread over the four '65' books- by Terry Tapp, 'Roger Malison', Dorothy K. Haynes et al - for future volumes of The Fontana Books of Great Horror Stories which came to an abrupt end on vol. 17 when the Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories was retired in 1984. R. Chetwynd-Hayes' Doomed To The Night is obviously the 21st Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories in all but name.

[dem]

Off the back of C. E. Ward's Assizes, could no longer resist a decades overdue rematch with an earlier posthumous adventure of Judge George Jeffreys.

Bram Stoker - The Judge's House: The manor house in Benchurch had proved impossible to let long before it fell into its current disrepair on account of the fearsome reputation of it's long dead owner. Estate agent is therefore delighted when Malcolmson, a young mathematics student, sees 'The Judges House' as ideal for his purpose. He is of a mind that its only rats haunt the property and he finds their company strangely comforting save for one exception: a monster rodent ever sat in the plush chair beneath the bell rope, its baleful eyes identical to those in a portrait of the evil judge.

The combination of rat and terrifying portrait gets on his Malcolmson's nerves. His thoughts take a morbid turn and he can no longer concentrate on his work. And then some fool informs him that the bellpull is "the very rope the hangman used for all the victims of the judges judicial rancour ..."

And another old favourite, especially for the wild ending.

Adrian Cole - The Moon Web: Spoilt and spiteful, Miss Amelia Darlington returns home from finishing school determined to pick up where she left off - leading wannabe suitors a merry dance, terrorising everyone within a five mile radius of the family estate, etc. Amelia takes particular delight in flaunting her body before Tobias, the lonely old gardener. That gossip about her strange fondness for spiders has reached the village pub is a first as the servants tend to keep Darlington scandal in house.

Tobias's interest Amelia's nocturnal activities has become dangerously obsessive to the point where he's contemplating rape. The girl is well aware that she's being spied upon, and in a unique moment of sincerity, confides in the stalker that he is the one person she has ever met who has tasted of the truth. Everyone else is a fool. In Switzerland "I learned to listen to the earth breath. I learned to love all living things, no matter how small." Each night she sneaks into the woods to commune with nature. Tobias is suitably taken aback - that this callous creature, of all people, should actually understand his world!. Now they're such soul mates perhaps he'll accept her invitation to meet in the glade at midnight after all ...

[Swampirella]

Jan 27, 2017 13:31:34 GMT Michael Connolly said:

Jun 19, 2015 6:29:48 GMT dem said:

Mary Danby (ed.) – Realms of Darkness (Octopus, 1985)

Introduction – Christopher Lee

Martin Amis – Denton’s Death
Anon – In the Slaughteryard
Anon – The Dead Man of Varley Grange
Robert Arthur – Footsteps Invisible
Denys Val Baker – The Potter’s Art
E. F. Benson – The Thing in the Hall
Ambrose Bierce – The Boarded Window
Robert Bloch – The Mannikin
Anthony Boucher – They Bite
Elizabeth Bowen – The Demon Lover
Marjorie Bowen – The Crown Derby Plate
Christianna Brand – The Kite
John Dickson Carr – Blind Man’s Hood
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Door
Agatha Christie – The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael
Roger Clarke – Blackberries
Adrian Cole – The Moon Web
Frederick Cowles – The Horror of Abbot’s Grange
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Roald Dahl – Pig
Mary Danby – Robbie
August Derleth – The Extra Passenger
William Croft Dickinson – The Witch’s Bone
Amelia B. Edwards – The Four-Fifteen Express
A. E. Ellis – The Haunted Haven
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The Sexton’s Adventure
John Galt – The Black Ferry
Catherine Gleason – Friends
Winston Graham – The Circus
Davis Grubb – Where the Woodbine Twineth
Willis Hall – Waking or Sleeping
L. P. Hartley – Someone in the Lift
Dorothy K. Haynes – The Peculiar Case of Mrs. Grimmond
C. D. Heriot – The Trapdoor
Patricia Highsmith – The Day of Reckoning
George Hitchcock – An Invitation to the Hunt
Geoffrey Household – Taboo
Washington Irving – Guests from Gibbet Island
Margaret Irwin – The Book
W. W. Jacobs – The Three Sisters
M. R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House.
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
Stephen King – The Reaper’s Image
Sterling E. Lanier – Soldier Key
Kay Leith – The Sanguivites
L. A. Lewis – Hybrid
Frank Belknap Long – The Black Druid
F. G. Loring – The Tomb of Sarah
Agnes MacLeod – The Skeleton Hand
W. Somerset Maugham – The Man from Glasgow
Guy de Maupassant – The Hostelry
Edmund Mitchell – The Phantom of the Lake
Arthur Morrison – The Thing in the Upper Room
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
J. B. Priestley – The Demon King
Bill Pronzini – Peekaboo
Tony Richards – The Black Lake
Flavia Richardson – The Red Turret
Agnes Short – Intercom
Henry Slesar – Examination Day
Barnard Stacey – The Devil’s Ape
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Terry Tapp – Polish the Lid
Alan Temperley – Evening Flight
Paul Theroux – Dengué Fever
Christine Campbell Thomson – Message for Margie
Rosemary Timperley – Harry
H. Russell Wakefield – Lucky’s Grove
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm
Elizabeth Walter – The Tibetan Box
H. G. Wells – The Sea-Raiders
Simon West (August Derleth) – A Thin Gentleman with Gloves
Dennis Wheatley – The Case of the Haunted Chateau

Finally got a copy after all these years. By my reckoning, its only 13 or 14 of these stories didn't feature in the Fontana ghost/ horror/ tales of terror series'.

On balance, Realms of Darkness seems to be the best of Mary Danby's five bumper collections. Authors from the James List (Frederick Cowles, William Croft Dickinson, C. D. Heriot, F. G. Loring and others) are well represented.

From Margaret Irwin's "The Book": "Authors must all be filthy-minded; they probably wrote what they dared not express in their lives. ... He [the main character] saw Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte as two unpleasant examples
of spinsterhood; the one as a prying,sub-acid busybody in everyone else's flirtations,the other as a raving craving maenad seeking self-immolation on the altar of her frustrated passions." This makes me wonder about Margaret Irwin.

Thanks to the Vault, I felt compelled to order a copy of my very own. I think my favorites of the stories I hadn't read elsewhere were Roger Clarke's "Blackberries" and "Simon West's" "A Thin Gentleman with Gloves".

[weirdmonger]

Jul 10, 2015 12:05:18 GMT dem said:

Davis Grubb - Where The Woodbine Twineth. "You never believe me when I tell you things are real". When Eva's parents are killed, she's taken in by her Aunt Nell who has no patience with an imaginative five year old, forever chattering to imaginary friends who live under the Davernport and behind the Pianola. "When I was a little girl I never had time for such mischievous nonsense. I was far too busy doing the bidding of my fine God-fearing parents and learning to be useful in this world!" Eventually Aunt Nell scares off the fairy folk, but Mr. Peppercorn returns once to tell Eva she'll soon have a new friend, and if Nell takes her away, she can come and live with the little people where the woodbine twineth. Grandpa pays a visit. He's just back from New Orleans with a present for Eva, a beautiful black doll who she names Numa. It's all just as Mr. Peppercorn promised! Eva and Numa are such friends that sometimes they exchange places: Numa is the little girl, and Eva is the dolly in the box. Obviously, it doesn't take long before Nell is thoroughly fed up with this latest show of wilful defiance. The child will have to learn the hard way ...

The Aickman Absolution

The final reaction against the reactionary inside himself?


From sought provender to assuage hunger to a necessary Grubb…

WHERE THE WOODBINE TWINETH by Davis Grubb

A necessary coda to this book if not this whole series – where the coffee face in the Riddell becomes that of the NUMA, now a new word for nullimmortalis, where the oppressed does box up the oppressor in the shape of a golden-eyed white girl, as it were. The tension released? In-denial assuaged. The Gluey Zenoism at its transcendent still point? Whatever the authorial intentions.
On another level, a charmingly written story of childhood, in the New Orleans river steamer fields of yore, whereby a girl receives a dark doll amid an argument with her guardian aunt about the imaginary friends with whom the girl purports to play and speak. A domestic world with black servants. Naive and disarming, of its age, and with an inner truth that we can all now see via such gestalt scrutiny? From hubris to nirvana, from fear of the self’s ghosts to perfect numa. From horror to catharsis. A purging by or for Aickman? The ache in man.


Full context of above here: dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/06/07/the-7th-fontana-book-of-great-ghost-stories-edited-by-robert-aickman/

[dem]

To save you the trouble of copying across your entire blog, here, once again, the link, so those who wish to do so can read the reviews 'in context.'

DF Lewis Reviews

[helrunar]

Weirdmonger, that's a very intriguing way of looking at "Where the woodbine twineth." This was another story that was dramatized on US television--Margaret Leighton, who was a fantastic actress, played Aunt Nell on the Alfred Hitchcock mystery show. I'll have to watch that again soon.

cheers, H.

[weirdmonger]

Jun 21, 2021 13:45:18 GMT helrunar said:

Weirdmonger, that's a very intriguing way of looking at "Where the woodbine twineth." This was another story that was dramatized on US television--Margaret Leighton, who was a fantastic actress, played Aunt Nell on the Alfred Hitchcock mystery show. I'll have to watch that again soon.

cheers, H.

Thanks, I’ll see if I can find that dramatisation on any of the film or Tv channels that I rent!

[Dr Strange]

Jun 21, 2021 14:00:33 GMT weirdmonger said:

Jun 21, 2021 13:45:18 GMT helrunar said:

Weirdmonger, that's a very intriguing way of looking at "Where the woodbine twineth." This was another story that was dramatized on US television--Margaret Leighton, who was a fantastic actress, played Aunt Nell on the Alfred Hitchcock mystery show. I'll have to watch that again soon.

cheers, H.

Thanks, I’ll see if I can find that dramatisation on any of the film or Tv channels that I rent!

It's on dailymotion, if you can put up with the ad breaks -

[helrunar]

Those advert breaks on DM can be really harsh. Good find, though.

cheers, Hel

[weirdmonger]

Jun 21, 2021 22:19:13 GMT Dr Strange said:

It's on dailymotion, if you can put up with the ad breaks -

Thanks so much for directing me to that brilliantly chilling rendition of the Davis Grubb story….

And it had no ad breaks at all!

[Dr Strange]

Glad you enjoyed it. I think maybe the ads are blocked if you watch it here rather than on the dailymotion site, though I'm not really sure about that. I didn't realise that Grubb also wrote The Night of the Hunter until I googled him just now.

[jamesdoig]

Jun 22, 2021 10:36:35 GMT Dr Strange said:

I didn't realise that Grubb also wrote The Night of the Hunter until I googled him just now.

Fantastic film - shows how good Robert Mitchum was.