A review by hayesstw
Great Short Stories Of Detection, Mystery And Horror - First Series by Morely Roberts, Bram Stoker, Alfred McClelland Burrage, E.F. Benson, Robert Smythe Hichens, L.T. Meade, May Sinclair, John Metcalfe, Robert Eustace, Barry Pain, R. Austin Freeman, Robert Barr, Charles Collins, Basil Thomson, M.R. James, W.F. Harvey, Hedley Barker, Marjorie Bowen, J. Storer Clouston, Robert Louis Stevenson, F.A.M. Webster, W.W. Jacobs, Charles Dickens, Raymund Allen, Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Machen, C.E. Bechhofer Roberts, Sax Rohmer, Percival Wilde, Ernest Bramah, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Violet Hunt, Robert Hugh Benson, J.F. Sullivan, R. Ellis Roberts, Mrs. Henry Wood, Margaret Oliphant, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Anthony Wynne, H.C. Bailey, N. Royde-Smith, G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Baroness Orczy, A.J. Alan, Edgar Jepson, E.W. Hornung, J.D. Beresford, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, Michael Arlen, Jerome K. Jerome, Walter de la Mare, Aldous Huxley, Eden Phillpotts, Oliver Onions, Ethel Colburn Maine, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, E.C. Bentley, H.G. Wells, Victor L. Whitechurch

5.0

When I was a child we had this work on our bookshelves, in three volumes, just like the one in the illustrations, but they disappeared in several moves, when my mother got rid of a lot of surplus possessions. I read many of the stories but my favourites, the ones I reread many times, were those in the "horror" section, and it was this book that gave me a taste for horror stories.

It was more than fifty years ago now, but the stories that made the biggest impression on me, that I read and re-read, were "The Wendigo" by [a:Algernon Blackwood|38840|Algernon Blackwood|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1361603654p2/38840.jpg] and "Couching at the door" by [a:D.K. Broster|704643|D.K. Broster|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-e0ba3b90c110cd67123d6a850d85373e.png]. After the books disappeared I sometimes wanted to read them again, but I could only remember the titles, and not the names of the authors, and I thought I would never find them again.

And then along came the Internet, with its access to knowledgeable people, and other resources. A web search engine quickly found the authors of both these stories, and "The Wendigo" was available in downloadable form.