A review by minervacerridwen
Tales from the Dead of Night: Thirteen Classic Ghost Stories by L.P. Hartley, E.F. Benson, M.R. James, Chico Kidd, W.W. Jacobs, Cecily Gayford, Hugh Walpole, E. Nesbit, William Fryer Harvey, Edith Wharton, Saki, Rudyard Kipling, Ruth Rendell

4.0

I bought this book because of its pretty cover and I'm very glad I did. It's a good collection, showing the range of the classic horror genre, with more strong female characters than I would have expected in stories from the late 19th and early 20th century. In the first story it was even very hard not to read the main character as queer, which made me happy. I also loved the little author biographies, which seemed to say a little more than the 'standard' facts we know about famous writers from the old days.

One of my favourite stories was "Pirates", where it became clear that it doesn't always have to be a monster or a ghost that creeps over us, but that good memories can haunt us as much as fears or bad thoughts. I like it when horror shows that kind of insights about humanity.
Towards the end of the book, the stories offered me fewer surprises, but all in all I'm very glad I read it, because I definitely learned something about the genre.