Polar HorrorsStrange Tales from the World's Ends
Inspired by ground-breaking expeditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers of the weird began to construct a literary Arctic and Antarctic in which terrors lay undiscovered in the ice and gateways to bizarre hidden worlds lay waiting. From lurid Arctic narratives of life amongst polar bears to tales of ghostly visitations within the wind-blown wilds of the southern continent, this new collection uncovers a wealth of neglected material from this niche of literature obsessed with the limits of human experience.
Featuring tales rife with aliens, twisted science and madness spanning from 1837–1946, this anthology also includes a gem of twenty-first century Arctic horror to trace the enduring lure of these sublime and uncanny spaces at the ends of the Earth.
Contents
Introduction by John Miller
1. The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon by James Hogg
2. The Moonstone Mass (1868) by Harriet Prescott Spofford
3. The Captain of the 'Polestar' (1945) by Arthur Conan Doyle (1883)
4. Skule Skerry (1928) by John Buchan
5. The Third Interne (1938) by Idwal Jones
6. Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard (2019) by Aviaq Johnston
7. A Secret of the South Pole (1902) by Hamilton Drummond
8. In Amundsen's Tent (1928) novelette by John Martin Leahy
9. Creatures of the Light (1930) by Sophie Wenzel Ellis
10. Bride of the Antarctic (1939) by Amelia Reynolds Long
11. Ghost (1943) by Henry Kuttner
12. The Polar Vortex (1946) by Malcolm M. Ferguson
John Miller
John Miller is Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Sheffield, and specializes in the tattoo in literature.
British Library Tales of the Weird
The British Library Tales of the Weird series revives and unearths classic strange fiction from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the form of novels, single-author collections and thematic anthologies, complete with new introductions and fascinating notes by expert editors.
British Library Tales of the Weird consists of seventy-four books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of two more books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
