Sunless Solstice Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights

by Kirk, Tanya; Evans, Lucy

• ISBN13: 9780712354103
• ISBN10: 0712354107
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-10-01
• Publisher: British Library Publishing

Summary

Another festive edition to the Tales of the Weird series, following on from Spirits of the Season and Chill Tidings.

A unique selection ranging from the spooky haunted houses of Victorian Christmastime to experimental twentieth-century horrors. It offers a truly international scope of stories, from the pine forests of Canada to the peaks of the Alps.

Like any other boy I expected ghost stories at Christmas, that was the time for them. What I had not expected, and now feared, was that such things should actually become real.

Strange things happen on the dark wintry nights of December. Welcome to a new collection of haunting Christmas tales, ranging from traditional Victorian chillers to weird and uncanny episodes by twentieth-century horror masters including Daphne du Maurier and Robert Aickman.

Lurking in the blizzard are menacing cat spirits, vengeful trees, malignant forces on the mountainside and a skater skirting the line between the mortal and spiritual realms. Wrap up warm – and prepare for the longest nights of all.

Author Biography

Lucy Evans and Tanya Kirk are curators in the Printed Heritage Collections team at the British Library. Tanya is Lead Curator for the period 1601–1900. She was a co-curator of the exhibition Terror & Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, and has edited the Tales of the Weird collections Spirits of the Season and Chill Tidings. Lucy works primarily with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books and was the curator of the children’s literature exhibition, Marvellous and Mischievous.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
A Note from the Publisher

The Ghost at the Cross-Roads - Frederick Manley
The Blue Room - Lettice Galbraith
On the Northern Ice - Elia Wilkinson Peattie
The Black Cat - W. J. Wintle
Ganthony's Wife - E. Temple Thurston
Mr Huffam - Hugh Walpole
The Man Who Came Back - Margery Lawrence
The Third Shadow - H. Russell Wakefield
The Apple Tree - Daphnie du Maurier
The Leaf-sweeper - Muriel Spark
The Visiting Star - Robert Aickman
A Fall of Snow - James Turner