The Dark Descent [Paperback]

This book was published in 1987 and contained 56 short stories by 47 writers. There were 30 authors from the United States, 14 from Great Britain, plus Ireland's Sheridan LeFanu and Fitz-James O'Brien and Russia's Turgenev. Of all the writers, nine were women.

The pieces ranged from 1835 (Hawthorne) to the 1980s (Dennis Etchison, Michael Shea, Stephen King, Tanith Lee, Clive Barker), covering virtually each decade. Three-quarters of the stories were from the 20th century. Nearly a third were from the 1970s and 80s.

From the early or mid-19th century, there were Hawthorne, Poe, LeFanu, O'Brien and Dickens. From the late 19th century up to World War II, there were Turgenev, Bierce, Gilman, Chambers, James, Wharton, Lovecraft, Faulkner, Leiber, Bloch and Bradbury, among others. And from England, M. R. James, Hichens, Blackwood, Onions, De La Mare, Lawrence and Collier. Those after World War II included Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, O'Connor, Matheson, Dick, Ellison, Oates, Disch, Shea and King. And from England, Aickman -- called the best English writer for that period -- Campbell, Lee and Barker. For Aickman and King, three stories each were included.

The editor's introduction discussed how horror fiction had been a vital element of English and American literature for at least 150 years. Three great traditional English writers -- M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Walter De La Mare -- plus the Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany were cited; all but the latter were represented. In the 20th century, U.S. influences included Weird Tales, the magazine founded in 1923, which concentrated on the florid and antiquarian; H. P. Lovecraft -- called the most important American writer of horror fiction in the first half of the 20th century; the pulp fantasy magazine Unknown, founded in 1939, which offered more contemporary settings and clearer prose and helped broaden the category of horror by crossing it with SF; a number of anthologies in the 1930s and 40s; and the trend toward SF horror in the 1950s that included Matheson, Sturgeon and Bradbury. The editor said that the dominant form of horror until the 1970s had been the short story and novella, but this had changed thereafter with the success of novels by Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty and Stephen King.

The editor argued that in horror fiction there were three types of emphasis, often interlinked but with one usually foremost: (1) the moral allegorical, the most popular type, which involved the intrusion of supernatural evil into reality, through things like haunting, possession, ghosts or witchcraft (typically, Lovecraft and Stephen King); (2) the study of aberrant human psychology, which might be either supernatural or psychological, as in The Heart of Darkness, Psycho and -- though he wasn't mentioned -- Poe; and (3) the fantastic, which generally avoided either a supernatural or psychological cause, emphasizing foremost the ambiguous nature of reality and encompassing the surreal (Poe, Kafka, De La Mare, Aickman). The editor's categories were a useful frame for many of the stories.

There were some great stories in the collection. Most enjoyed were the piece by Michael Shea that described a confrontation between two worlds in an original way, and one by Harlan Ellison that showed NYC in a new light. One of these contained the collection's only vampire story, imagined in a new way. There were also tales by Blackwood, De La Mare, Jackson, Aickman and Barker that powerfully suggested supernatural, psychological or other menace ("The Willows," "Seaton's Aunt," "The Summer People," "The Hospice," "Dread"). There was one of Lovecraft's best tales ("Rats in the Walls"). The best combination of supernatural intrusion and aberrant psychology, for this reader, was the one by Onions ("The Beckoning Fair One"). And finally, there was a good though non-horrific description by Disch of a stranger's alienation in a foreign land ("The Asian Shore"). The selections overall made clear the stylistic connections between writers like Blackwood and Lovecraft, and De La Mare and Aickman.

On the other hand, many of the stories after World War II, especially the most recent ones, contained more SF than real, atmospheric horror. Nothing was selected from writers like Irving, Twain, W. W. Jacobs, Lord Dunsany, Paul Bowles, Gerald Kersh, William Sansom, E. C. Tubb or Angela Carter. The editors included a ponderous story by Turgenev, claiming him as one of the few masters of supernatural horror fiction outside the English language in the 19th century, passing over writers like Hoffmann, The Brothers Grimm, Pushkin, Merimée, Gogol, Gautier, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Maupassant and Garshin.

Other large anthologies of horror fiction include Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944), Dark Forces (1980), The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981), The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories (1984), The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984), Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (1985), The Mammoth Book of Terror (1991), The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1991), Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown (1993), The Oxford Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1996), The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003), The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007), American Supernatural Tales (2007) and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (2008).

Smaller volumes -- below 300 pages or so -- include The Ghost Book (1926), Great Ghost Stories (1930), The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), Great Tales of Horror (1933), A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), A Second Century of Creepy Stories (1937), Best Ghost Stories (1945), The Second Ghost Book (1952), The Third Ghost Book (1955), The Supernatural in the English Short Story (1959), The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Vols. 1-30 (1959-88), The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Vols. 1-20 (1964-84), The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories Vols. 1-17 (1966-84), The Thrill of Horror: 22 Terrifying Tales (1975), Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1984), Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (1997) and Haunted Houses: The Greatest Stories (1997).

Indispensable reading for fans and scholars of horror, and for anyone who wants to understand what all the fuss is about. Hartwell's lengthy introduction provides the most clear and lucid explanation of horror's primary concepts and terminologies that I have read anywhere, the organization of his material makes clear sense. The book contains some of the standard chestnuts that every good horror collection has to have, but also includes brilliant choices from little-known or little-represented writers. Joanna Russ's dreamy, heartbreaking, shuddering "My Dear Emily" is alone worth the price of the book: if you think you've heard or read every possible variation on the over-worked Vampire theme, this one will tear your head off. Every tale in this hefty collection is similarly disturbing, eerie and beautiful. Hartwell has another collection out on horror novellas, and while also superb, it is hard to top or even match this one. (The only one that might come close is Alberto Manguel's "Black Water," although it has a lot of fantasy in its mix.)

This top-notch collection of stories cover a very large ground in the landscape of horror. There are (too) well-known stories from the old masters and a few pleasantly unpleasant shocks in terms of omissions, there are classics as-well-as bizarre choices from the present big-guys. Overall, a massive collection that has something for all. Recommended.