As I type this, it’s nearly the end of October and Halloween.
It may not be a surprise then that publishers are publishing (or re-publishing) books with a supernatural element.
Under the imprint ‘Penguin Horror’, publishers Penguin have re-published five books this year:
- Benighted by J B Priestley
- Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton
- Moths by Rosalind Ashe
- The Witch and the Priest by Hilda Lewis
- and Classic Horror: An Anthology by various authors
with contemporary covers by Choo.
Classic Horror’s pretty much what the title suggests: ten stories that are generally regarded as classics. The stories are, in order:
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
- Transformation by Mary Shelley
- The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
- The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards
- The Romance of Certain Old Clothes by Henry James
- The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- The Shadow by Edith Nesbit
- August Heat by W F Harvey
- Sredni Vastar by Saki
There’s not a lot I can fault with such a selection. Though a mere 170 pages, there’s a pleasing degree of range within them. The collection starts strongly: Sleepy Hollow is well known not only for the story itself, but spinoffs such as the television series Sleepy Hollow and its clear influence upon Tim Burton’s film Sleepy Hollow. It’s also the story that the cover vividly depicts, of the Headless Horseman that Ichabod Crane sees.
There’s lots of other stories that I would say are represent other legendary horror writers: the story by Poe is perhaps the most famous, in all of its Gothic glory, although Amelia B Edwards’s The Phantom Coach may be familiar – it’s even been parodied in The Simpsons!
Although best known for The Turn of the Screw, Henry James’ The Romance of Certain Old Clothes works well here too. A story of poor familial relationships and ghostly revenge.
Transformation by Mary Shelley is a welcome reminder that she is not just the writer of Frankenstein, although as the story deals with body swapping there are basic similarities between the short story and the more famous novel.
In the same way, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body-Snatcher shows us that there was more to the author than The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. This one deals with the theft of dead bodies in Edinburgh for medical research, perhaps based upon the infamous work of Burke and Hare in the 1820’s. All dark shadowy streets and dead bodies, I found this one quite atmospheric to read on an Autumnal night.
Women horror writers have for decades been underrepresented and perhaps undervalued, so it was good to see stories by Amelia B. Edwards, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edith (or E.) Nesbit (perhaps better known for her novel The Railway Children, amongst other books). Edwards’ story I’ve mentioned already; Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story is a chilling description of female subjugation, which gives the word gaslighting an unfortunately relevant other-meaning. Nesbit’s story is quite chilling, as a piece of psychological horror that may make you feel quite uneasy. .
I reviewed the Harvey story, August Heat, in the Methuen collection last year. It still holds up. Although reading a story which involves the stifling heat of August may not be the best story to read in Autumn, it is an effective tale, with a killer of a cliff hanger ending. (Those who have read the story will have seen what I did there.)
Although I think Saki is becoming increasingly less well-known as a horror writer these days, his Sredni Vastar is an effective story of a strange boy and his pet, and a great story to close the book.
Personal favourites for me would be the Poe, Sleepy Hollow, Edwards’s Phantom Coach and Stevenson’s body snatching escapades, although to be honest, there’s not one I disliked, which is unusual for an anthology collection, i find.
You could quibble about the authors not given here – I could add E F Benson, H P Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, M R James, for example – I’m sure you could think of others. It would have been nice to have had an introduction or an overview putting the stories in context, but what you get here is the bare bones of a collection, with no flab or filler. Judging this book on its own merits, this is a nicely chosen assemblage of well-known and more obscure older horror stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, that shows that the horror genre has been around a long time, before Stephen King and the like. It also illustrates that the genre is not just about vampires and werewolves.
In short, this anthology is a short, sharp shock of stories that work well together. Not too gruesome yet generally well written, if you’ve never read any classic horror before, this is a very good place to start. It also has the advantage that you could read them all in one or two sittings, and as a result they make a great Halloween read.
© 2025 Mark Yon
Paperback | Penguin Books
CLASSIC HORROR: An Anthology by Various Authors
October 2025 | 170 pages
ISBN: 978 140 5985 239
