Ancient Sorceries

A beautiful gift edition of some of the most eerie and unnerving tales from one of Britain's greatest proponents of ghost stories and weird fiction, containing H.P. Lovecraft's favourite story 'Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood's genius there can be no dispute.' H.P. Lovecraft A traveller is trapped in a remote French hill town with oddly feline inhabitants; an old sea captain's ravings build to a terrifying climax one story night; two friends camping on a lonely will-covered island are haunted by the twisted trees and sinister shapes in the water. Algernon Blackwood was one of Britain's greatest ever proponents of weird and supernatural tales. This collection contains four of his most otherwordly creations: 'Ancient Sorceries', 'The Listener', 'the Sea Fit' and 'The Willows', a story so curiously unnerving it was hailed by H. P. Lovecraft as his favourite.

Algernon Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill, now a suburb of London, in 1869. Despite being raised in a strictly Christian household, he was interested in other religions from a young age and eventually came to believe in what he called 'animism' - the idea that all of nature was sentient and imbued with spiritual meaning - which greatly influenced his later work. Throughout his life he travelled widely and wrote prolifically, producing 14 novels as well as many popular collections of weird and ghostly tales. He even adapted and read his own stories on the radio and early television, earning himself the nickname 'The Ghost Man'. Blackwood died in 1951, and today is regarded as one of the masters of the supernatural story, to rank alongside M. R. James and H. P. Lovecraft.