Terror AustralisDark Tales from Down Under
Bunyips, boundary riders and bush-lurkers: just some of the horrors that populate these tales of the Antipodean uncanny.
The Australian weird tradition may be a short one, but it’s as varied and rich as anything you’ll find in the Old World. Many of these tales – from the likes of Marcus Clarke, Sophie Osmond, Ernest Favenc and Mary Fortune – are written by strangers in a new land. Traditional European elements of the weird tale appear in new forms or are moulded afresh to a harsh new environment – the haunted house is no longer a rambling manor, but an abandoned shanty or rundown homestead; the ancient wood, the lair of evils and creatures from folklore, becomes the oppressively hot, fly-infested bush; and the windswept moor is the empty, endless Australian outback with its blood-read sands and emaciated myall trees. The anthology also includes Aboriginal voices, providing a very different take on the landscape and its horrors.
James Doig
James Doig grew up in Fremantle, Western Australia. He was educated at the University of Western Australia, and the University of Wales, Swansea, where he completed a PhD in medieval history. He has long been a devotee of horror fiction, and subscribes to the T.E.D. Klein view that interest in such things begins in the crib. He has published articles on obscure writers of supernatural and horror fiction such as R.R. Ryan, Keith Fleming, and R. Murray Gilchrist, and has edited a collection of shot stories by the Australian-born writer H.B. Marriot Watson for Ash-Tree Press. He has completed an anthology of early Australian supernatural fiction, which is currently under consideration by Ash-Tree. He works at the National Archives of Australia, where the research for his article was carried out.
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-six 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.
