Mary E Wall

Introducing an influential American author to the series, offering a view of how weird fiction developed in the U.S. alongside the works of British authors. It includes two stories missed by the ’complete’ strange story anthologies which have been assembled thanks to Mike Ashley’s expertise.

Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered.

The disquieting tales of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman explore a world of contrast, where the supernatural erupts out of authentically drawn portraits of New England life. This is a world of witchcraft, secrecy, domestic spaces turned uncanny and ancestral vengeance inflicted upon the unfortunates of the present.

Collecting the best of the author’s strange tales - including ’The White Shawl’, which was unpublished during her lifetime - this volume casts a light on an underappreciated contributor to weird fiction and the shadowy corners of a dark imagination.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) was a prolific New England novelist and short story writer, whose works ranged from children’s tales to uncanny and dark literature. Her writing espoused her feminist beliefs and the rejection of traditional domestic roles for women. In 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mike Ashley is an author, anthologist and editor with a specialism for seeking out rare strange stories from the periodicals and magazines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is an expert in the fields of weird fiction and classic mystery stories, and a leading authority on the history and development of the occult detection tale.