Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Henry Mazzeo. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Henry Mazzeo. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Short Story Wednesday: HAUNTINGS edited by Henry Mazzeo (illustrated by Edward Gorey)















This book can be read here, at the Internet Archive (sadly denuded of its jacket).

Contents, all illustrated by Edward Gorey:

Introduction: The Castle of Terror by Henry Mazzeo
"The Lonesome Place" by August Derleth
"In the Vault" by H. P. Lovecraft
"The Man Who Collected Poe" by Robert Bloch
"Where Angels Fear" by Manly Wade Wellman
"Lot No. 249" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Haunted Dolls’ House" by M. R. James
"The Open Door" by Mrs. Oliphant
"Thus I Refute Beelzy" by John Collier
"Levitation" by Joseph Payne Brennan
"The Ghostly Rental" by Henry James
"The Face" by E. F. Benson
"The Whistling Room" by William Hope Hodgson
"The Grey Ones" by J. B. Priestley
"The Stolen Body" by H. G. Wells
"The Red Lodge" by H. Russell Wakefield
"The Visiting Star" by Robert Aickman
"Midnight Express" by Alfred Noyes

This might be one of  the most important books to me among all those I've read. It's certainly, among the four or five horror anthologies I read by the time I was eight, one of only two aimed at adults (the other was the Berkley paperback edited by Hal Cantor, Ghosts and Things), and the one which I remember best (odd how few women's stories were collected in either this or the Cantor, which featured only Shirley Jackson's "The Lovely House" in that wise, though Betty M. Owen's Scholastic Book Services anthologies and the Robert Arthur and Harold Q. Masur Hitchcock anthologies helped redress that balance). Happily for me, perhaps (foolishly) because of the Gorey illustrations, this one was classed in the children's section of the Enfield Central Public Library, where I found it easily enough (not that having to go over to the adult section to find, say, Joan Aiken's collection The Green Flash was any great trial).

This book introduced me to all these geniuses, though of course I'd heard of Sherlock Holmes before reading Doyle's detective-free mummy story here, and had probably seen adaptations of at least some of these folks' works on Night Gallery, or in Bloch's case, his Star Trek scripts, and the George Pal productions of adaptations from that other familiar name, H. G. Wells.

Despite the attempts by some reviewers to claim this book for the ghost story tradition, Mazzeo cast his net considerably wider than that, including revenants other than Doyle's mummy, devils (or at least one Assumes they're devils) in at least one of the wittiest stories here (John Collier lets you know, after all, with his title, and Manly Wade Wellman is only a bit more coy in labeling his tale of a place you don't want to be). M. R. James traps children with a toy, Alfred Noyes with a book; Joseph Payne Brennan, with his best story and one of his shortest, traps the childish, and even H. P. Lovecraft is represented by one of his least self-indulgent stories. Derleth shows what he could do, when not attempting to corrupt Lovecraft's legacy into a Christian metaphor, and Wells's stolen body story is an improvement over the "Elvesham" variation collected by Damon Knight in his The Dark Side. J. B. Priestly, a diverse man of letters, I would next encounter primarily as the author (and reader, for a Spoken Arts recording) of his essay collection Delight, which was indeed delightful; Robert Aickman, while also expert on the waterways of Britain, remained for me and many others the greatest of ghost-story writers of the latter half of the 20th Century, even with Russell Kirk and Joanna Russ and Charles Grant and so many others providing excellent contributions to that literature. That obscure fellow James and E. F. Benson (not yet rediscovered for his Mapp & Lucia comedies of manners, and only one of three prolific Benson brothers in the horror field) were the only writers shared by both this book and the Cantor; the Hodgson is a Carnacki story, a fine introduction to psychic investigators.

And the Gorey illustrations will stay with anyone. This book essentially introduced me to lifelong favorites Bloch, Collier, Benson and Wellman, and even the weakest stories here were rewarding; the Noyes, like the Brennan, is almost certainly the best thing he wrote (at least in prose or the uncanny) and a landmark in the field. I see where Gahan Wilson reviewed this for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1969, Fritz Leiber somewhat belatedly for Fantastic in 1973...I shall have to seek out those reviews [and have, below]...for that matter, I will need to read this book again, eventually, and see how completely all of these have stuck with me. And, as far as I know, Mazzeo never published another book.

And looking at the book at the Internet Archive let me see, for the first time in years (decades?) that Mazzeo thanks prolific (and often horror-fiction) anthologist Seon Manley (usually in tandem with her sister, GoGo Lewis) for assistance on this, again possibly only book. He asked the right editor, clearly.

Further appreciations: 

Gahan Wilson in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969 (Joanna Russ also has reviews in this issue, just before Wilson's occasional column about horror fiction and related matter, "The Dark Corner").

Fritz Leiber in Fantastic, September 1973 (page 110), published around the time I found the book...

And please see Patti Abbott's blog for more of today's short stories...


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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: HAUNTINGS: STORIES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, edited by Henry Mazzeo (Doubleday 1968)





Contents, all illustrated by Edward Gorey:
Introduction: The Castle of Terror by Henry Mazzeo
The Lonesome Place by August Derleth
In the Vault by H. P. Lovecraft
The Man Who Collected Poe by Robert Bloch
Where Angels Fear by Manly Wade Wellman
Lot No. 249 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Haunted Dolls’ House by M. R. James
The Open Door by Mrs. Oliphant
Thus I Refute Beelzy by John Collier
Levitation by Joseph Payne Brennan
The Ghostly Rental by Henry James
The Face by E. F. Benson
The Whistling Room by William Hope Hodgson
The Grey Ones by J. B. Priestley
The Stolen Body by H. G. Wells
The Red Lodge by H. Russell Wakefield
The Visiting Star by Robert Aickman
Midnight Express by Alfred Noyes

This might be the most important book to me among all those I've read. It's certainly, among the four or five horror anthologies I read by the time I was eight, one of only two aimed at adults (the other was the Berkley paperback edited by Hal Cantor, Ghosts and Things), and the one which I remember best (odd how few women's stories were collected in either this or the Cantor, which featured only Shirley Jackson's "The Lovely House" in that wise, though Betty M. Owen's Scholastic Book Services anthologies and the Robert Arthur and Harold Q. Masur Hitchcock anthologies helped redress that balance). Happily for me, perhaps (foolishly) because of the Gorey illustrations, this one was classed in the children's section of the Enfield Central Public Library, where I found it easily enough (not that having to go over to the adult section to find, say, Joan Aiken's collection The Green Flash was any great trial).

This book introduced me to all these geniuses, though of course I'd heard of Sherlock Holmes before reading Doyle's detective-free mummy story here, and had probably seen adaptations of at least some of these folks' works on Night Gallery, or in Bloch's case, his Star Trek scripts, and the George Pal productions of adaptations from that other familiar name, H. G. Wells.

Despite the attempts by some reviewers to claim this book for the ghost story tradition, Mazzeo cast his net considerably wider than that, including revenants other than Doyle's mummy, devils (or at least one Assumes they're devils) in at least one of the wittiest stories here (John Collier lets you know, after all, with his title, and Manly Wade Wellman is only a bit more coy in labeling his tale of a place you don't want to be). M. R. James traps children with a toy, Alfred Noyes with a book; Joseph Payne Brennan, with his best story and one of his shortest, traps the childish, and even H. P. Lovecraft is represented by one of his least self-indulgent stories. Derleth shows what he could do, when not attempting to corrupt Lovecraft's legacy into a Christian metaphor, and Wells's stolen body story is an improvement over the "Elvesham" variation collected by Damon Knight in his The Dark Side. J. B. Priestly, a diverse man of letters, I would next encounter primarily as the author (and reader, for a Spoken Arts recording) of his essay collection DELIGHT, which was indeed delightful; Robert Aickman, while also expert on the waterways of Britain, remained for me and many others the greatest of ghost-story writers of the latter half of the 20th Century, even with Russell Kirk and Joanna Russ and Charles Grant and so many others providing excellent contributions to that literature. That obscure fellow James and E. F. Benson (not yet rediscovered for his comedies of manners, and only one of three prolific Benson brothers in the horror field) were the only writers shared by both this book and the Cantor; the Hodgson is a Carnacki story, a fine introduction to psychic investigators.

And the Gorey illustrations will stay with anyone. This book essentially introduced me to lifelong favorites Bloch, Collier, Benson and Wellman, and even the weakest stories here were rewarding; the Noyes, like the Brennan, is almost certainly the best thing he wrote (at least in prose or the uncanny) and a landmark in the field. I see where Gahan Wilson reviewed this for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1969, Fritz Leiber somewhat belatedly for Fantastic in 1973...I shall have to seek out those reviews...for that matter, I will need to read this book again, eventually, and see how completely all of these have stuck with me. And, as far as I know, Mazzeo never published another book.

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for this week's other "forgotten" books.
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Sunday, October 29, 2017

My Hallowe'en and beyond: Early Key Horror Anthologies (for me)

One of the books I learned to read with (along with Dr. Seuss and Gyo Fujikawa and Little Golden Books): compiled by Oscar Weigle



 edited by Wilhelmina Harper, borrowed from the elementary school library in first grade:
  • Publication: Ghosts and Goblins: Stories for Hallowe'en and Other Times
  • Editor: Wilhelmina Harper
  • Date: 1936-08-20
  • Publisher: E. P. Dutton
  • Price: $2.00
  • Pages: 271



  •  Ghosts and Goblins • (1936) • interior artwork by Wilfred Jones
  • 13 • Foreword (Ghosts and Goblins) • (1936) • essay by Wilhelmina Harper
  • 23 • Hallowe'en • (1936) • poem by Molly Capes
  • 25 • The Ghost of the Great White Stag • (1925) • short story by Arthur C. Parker
  • 37 • The Hungry Old Witch • (1924) • short story by Charles J. Finger
  • 52 • The Conjure Wives • (1921) • short story by Frances G. Wickes
  • 57 • Someone • juvenile • (1913) • poem by Walter de la Mare
  • 58 • Ah Tcha the Sleeper • juvenile • (1925) • short story by Arthur Bowie Chrisman
  • 69 • The Woodman and the Goblins • juvenile • (1936) • short story by J. Berg Esenwein and Marietta Stockard [as by J. B. Esenwein and Marietta Stockard]
  • 77 • The King o' the Cats • (1894) • short story by Joseph Jacobs
  • 80 • The Enchanted Cow • (1931) • short story by Mary Gould Davis [as by Mary G. Davis]
  • 88 • Peter and the Witch of the Wood • (1936) • short story by Anna Wahlenberg
  • 105 • The Goblin of the Pitcher • (1931) • short story by Alida S. Malkus
  • 112 • Tamlane • (1894) • short story by Joseph Jacobs
  • 118 • The Ghosts of Forefathers' Hill • (1922) • short story by Raymond Macdonald Alden
  • 131 • The Shadow People • (1917) • poem by Francis Ledwidge
  • 133 • The Black Cat of the Witch-Dance-Place • (1936) • short fiction by Frances Jenkins Olcott [as by Frances J. Olcott]
  • 138 • Tomson's Hallowe'en • juvenile • (1936) • short story by Margaret Baker [as by Margaret Baker and Mary Baker]
  • 156 • So-Beé-Yit • (1936) • short story by Maynard Dixon
  • 165 • The Old Hag of the Forest • (1899) • short story by Seumas MacManus
  • 182 • The Ghost Wife • (1936) • short story by Charles A. Eastman
  • 187 • The Old Witch • (1894) • short story by Joseph Jacobs
  • 194 • Wait Till Martin Comes • (1921) • short story by Frances G. Wickes
  • The Wishing-Well • (1918) • short fiction by Maud Lindsay and Emilie Poulsson
  • The Witch's Shoes • (1929) • short fiction by Frances Jenkins Olcott [as by Frances J. Olcott]
  • 208 • Old Man Gully's Hant • (1936) • short story by Sarah Johnson Cocke [as by Sarah J. Cocke]
  • A Hallowe'en Story • (1936) • poem by Margaret Widdemer
  • The Witch of Lok Island • (1929) • short story by Elsie Masson
  • The Great White Bear • juvenile • non-genre • (1915) • short story by Maud Lindsay
  • The Ghosts of Kahlberg • (1936) • short fiction by Bernard Henderson
  • The Wonderful Lamb • (1930) • short fiction by Nándor Pogány
  • Teeny-Tiny • (1890) • short fiction by Joseph Jacobs

    •


















    Edited by Hal Cantor:
    Most common cover
    color variations
    edited by Nora Kramer:

    edited by Henry Mazzeo:
    • Publication: Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural
    • Editors: Henry Mazzeo
    • Date: 1968-00-00
    • ISBN: 0-385-09373-X [978-0-385-09373-6]
    • Publisher: Doubleday
    • Price: $5.98
    • Pages: 318
    • Binding: hc
    • Type: ANTHOLOGY
    • Cover: Edward Gorey

    edited by Kathleen Lines:
    • Publication: The House of the Nightmare: and Other Eerie Tales
    • Editor: Kathleen Lines
    • Date: 1967-00-00
    • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
    • Price: $3.95
    • Pages: xii + 250
    • Binding: hc
    • Type: ANTHOLOGY
    edited by Robert Arthur:
    edited by Betty M. Owen
    and then onto Helen Hoke and Son Manley and Gogo Lewis and certainly quite a few more Robert Arthur, Harold Q. Masur and other Hitchcock-branded books, and several more from Betty M. Owen...and Gerald Page's annual The Year's Best Horror Stories...
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    Friday, May 27, 2016

    FF(Fantasy Fiction)M: FANTASTIC, FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, THE HAUNT OF HORROR: August/September 1973


    Three issues from the shank of each magazine's run under these editors...of course, editor (and eventual tv producer) Gerard F. "Gerry" Conway wouldn't get too much chance to do more with his prose magazine than this second issue of  The Haunt of Horror, which would be folded before the prepared third issue could be printed (Marvel soon offered a large-format black and white comic book with that title, to join a series they'd already started and advertise in the Haunt digest issues). Rather sobering to realize that of these three magazines, Haunt almost certainly had the largest budget...while not a lavish one by any means...contemporary issues of Analog (from Conde Nast) and Vertex (from Mankind Publishing, also publishing slick magazines. if lower-budget ones) and even the slowly cheapening Galaxy/If group of magazines at paperback publisher UPD were somewhat more impressively produced than any of these three, as the two more durable magazines were already, or about to become, literal cottage industry, put together over home-office tables. 

     Though the fiction they were publishing was about as good as that in any other fiction magazine in 1973.  Of course, when we look at the more talented contributors to these issues, that isn't too surprising...including knowing that "John K. Diomede" in two of the issues is a pseudonym for George Alec Effinger. The F&SF leads off with "Peregrine: Alflandia" as a fragment, not quite as free-standing as advertised by Edward Ferman's blurb, of the Secundis sequel to Peregrine: Primus by Avram Davidson. Essentially as the first chapter, it's a great teaser, even if Davidson was having so much fun with his more rustic characters' accents and idiosyncratic syntax, that it can be a little daunting at first, if clearly Davidson enjoying himself and sharing much of that joy. Basically, though, it's expert setting development and introduction of the first important characters, but the story is just starting to happen when the chapter ends. Set as it is in an alternate Mitteleuropa of the late 1800s, it has some of the feel of the (even better) Eszterhazy stories, which would begin appearing not much later.  

     Even better as well is the first of the too-short series of Arcana stories by Janet Fox, in the Fantastic issue, "A Witch in Time," where she demonstrates how much she's learned from the best of the sword and sorcery writers before her, and matches all but the very best of their work. Fox had published her first professionally-published fiction only a few years before, with the Magazine of Horror in 1970, and was already doing impressive work, even if her hand would grow a bit surer over the next several years. I can only wish she had published more. Meanwhile, one of her models, Fritz Leiber, reviews as his only book in this issue's column Henry Mazzeo's fine anthology of horror fiction Hauntings, illustrated by Edward Gorey, and he notes something I'd failed to fully perceive over the years (probably in part because I first read the book when I was eight or nine years old), that taken together, as they are presented on the dust jacket, the Gorey illustrations present their own narrative.

     And Leiber is of course present in the Haunt of Horror issue as well, with the second half of his first novel, Conjure Wife, reprinted justly as a classic. I will have more to say about all three issues (as you might well guess, given the bare bones on display here) with more time to devote to the task, but I will note the most annoying ads in all three issues are the stiff cigarette center inserts in all three, put in these and not a few paperbacks of the era (Dell Books, particularly, stick in my memory thus) by their printer/binders in collaboration with the publishers, as tobacco companies began to cope with losing access to tv and radio advertising in the U.S. True brand in the F&SF, Kent in the other two...even more enervating than the $20 astrological chart ads in the Fantastic (particularly considering how far $2o went in 1973) or the "anti-gravity device" or the "ESP laboratory" offered among the less savory classified ads in the F&SF (the pitches in the Fantastic tended toward witchcraft and related Hidden Knowledge, usually less expensively).
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