Fifteen More Great Novellas

By: E. T. A. Hoffman, Edith Wharton, Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, Henry Chapman Mercer, Julian Hawthorne, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert E. Howard

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 23 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Another collection of great classic novellas by superb storytellers:

1. Pigeons from Hell by Robert E. Howard
2. The Cremona Violin by E. T. A. Hoffman
3. Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton
4. Room Number Ten by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
5. The Screaming Skull by F. Marion Crawford
6. The Wolf Book by Henry Chapman Mercer
7. Absolute Evil by Julian Hawthorne
8. The Legend by Edith Wharton
9. The Twins by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
10. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant
11. The Stone Chamber by H. B. Marriott-Watson
12. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
13. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
14. The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat by Rudyard Kipling
15. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant

Public Domain (P)2018 Red Door Audiobooks

The ancestors of today's fantasy

These are the seeds of the fantasies that fill our bookstores today, though Ann Radcliffe and the Grimm brothers are the more distant proto-types. In these stories, the liminal, subliminal, intangible, marginal, magnetic and mesmeristic creep in to challenge the modern rationality of the late 19th century & early 20th. You can't read these as sword-&-sorcery, dragon-infested witch worlds; they require cerebral and emotional sensitivity.
And I liked that this is a collection of short stories. It is a rare treat for me - I generally spend my Audible credits on longer works. Dobson is a fine narrator; these stories don't need theatrical renditions.

Five authors I was familiar with: Howard, Hoffman, Wharton, Kipling and Wells. The others gave me a taste for reading more of them in the future. The last work, "The Library Window", introduced me to the prolific writer Margaret Oliphant. I shall certainly sample more of her works. I also learned about the old window tax in Great Britain, which explains why some windows got bricked up, and the interest in the topic of windows in general.

As I have taught courses in contemporary fantasy literature, I was fascinated to read the vampire story "Carmilla" that predated "Dracula" by a whole generation.
HG Wells classic seems a misfit in a couple ways. It is not liminally spooky, just science horror. In this collection, it is unique in being self-aware of class, yet just like all the other works in this collection, it deems only the top 1% as worthy of being primary characters.
The Rudyard Kipling's political satire is likewise a puzzling choice. Maybe if I understood better the politics I could see the horror.

Finally, why is impossible for Audible to attach names to the chapter titles?