Algernon Blackwood, página 2 de 4

"If a ghost is seen, what is it interests me less than than what sees it?" Thus Algernon Blackwood describes his fascination with human beings' ability to sense invisible powers and stirrings in the universe, a fascination he developed most famously in his stories about mystical, ineffable encounters with nature. This collection, selected by renowned scholar of the supernatural, E. F. Bleiler, is an excellent sample of Blackwood's work, including 12 of his best ghost stories and a crime story as well. Blackwood is acknowledged today as the author who made the ghost story into a respectable literary form.

El éxito de John Silence, el personaje más misterioso de la ficción moderna, según eslogan publicitario de la época, se debe en buena medida a la habilidad de Blackwood para combinar y dosificar una trama de suspense detectivesco con elementos de horror sobrenatural que convierten a su personaje en el patron de los cazafantasmas modernos.

Judy, Tim, and Maria were just little children. It was impossible to say exactly what their ages were, except that they were just the usual age, that Judy was the eldest, Maria the youngest, and that Tim, accordingly, came in between the two. Their father did his best for them; so did their mother; so did Aunt Emily, the latters sister. It is impossible to say very much about these three either, except that they were just Father, Mother, and Aunt Emily. They were the Authorities-in-Chief, and they knew respectively everything there was to be known about such remote and difficult subjects as London and Money; Food, Health and Clothing; Conduct, Behaviour and Regulations, both general and particular. Into these three departments of activity the children, without realising that they did so, classed them neatly. Aunt Emily, besides the special duties assigned to her, was a living embodiment of No. While Father allowed and permitted, while Mother wobbled and hesitated, Aunt Emily shook her head with decision, and said distinctly No. She was too full of warnings, advice, and admonitions to get about much. She wore gold glasses, and had an elastic, pointed nose. From the childrens point of view she must be classed as invalid. Somewhere, deep down inside them, they felt pity.

These are stories steeped in the majesty and mystery of nature. You dont read them - you fall into them, as into a dream. Lulled into a false sense of security, you discover you are no longer within comfortable boundaries. Your eyes have been opened to a larger world. You are about to embark on an incredible adventure...

One of the former British writers of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, Algernon Blackwood (1869 - 1951) wrote stories in which the slow accumulation of telling details produced a foreboding atmosphere of almost unendurable tension. Blackwoods literary renown began in 1908 with the publication of a highly successful collection of stories, John Silence - Physician Extraordinary, featuring a "psychic doctor."

The ghost story is as old as human speech, - and perhaps even antedates it. A naive acceptance of the supernatural was unquestionably one of the primal attributes of human intelligence. The ghost story may thus quite conceivably be the first form of tale ever invented. It makes its appearance comparatively early in the annals of literature...

Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased...

In the eerie silence of an empty house, shadows dance and whispers echo through the void. Algernon Blackwoods classic collection of ghost stories invites you into a realm where the supernatural lurks in the shadows, waiting to unravel the fabric of reality. From the chilling tale of a haunted house to the unsettling encounter with a spectral doppelganger, these stories will send shivers down your spine and leave you questioning the boundaries between the living and the dead. Prepare to be captivated by the master of the supernatural as he weaves a tapestry of fear and wonder that will haunt your dreams long after you turn the final page.

A British traveller in France stops in a remote French hill town with some very unusual inhabitants and soon finds himself unable to leave; a scholar staying in a lodging house feels himself observed by a malevolent presence; two friends on a canoeing trip spend a night on a lonely willow-covered island in the middle of the Danube, haunted by the strange trees and sinister shapes in the waterAlgernon Blackwood is one of Britains greatest ever proponents of weird and supernatural stories. This collection contains four of his most unnervingly curious tales: Ancient Sorceries, The Listener, The Sea Fit and The Willows.

A British traveller in France stops in a remote French hill town with some very unusual inhabitants and soon finds himself unable to leave; a scholar staying in a lodging house feels himself observed by a malevolent presence; two friends on a canoeing trip spend a night on a lonely willow-covered island in the middle of the Danube, haunted by the strange trees and sinister shapes in the water...Algernon Blackwood is one of Britains greatest ever proponents of weird and supernatural stories. This collection contains four of his most unnervingly curious tales: Ancient Sorceries, The Listener, The Sea Fit and The Willows.

Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment - river, sun, wind - and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible."

This collection assembles four of Blackwoods greatest stories: "The Insanity of Jones,""The Man Who Found Out,""The Glamour of the Snow," and "Sand." Algernon Blackwood was truly one of the progenitors of the weird fiction/fantasy genre!