A review by andynorth
The Dark Descent by David G. Hartwell

3.0

I'll echo most of the other reviews here in saying that you'll probably find a couple stories here that you'll love and a lot that will bore you to death. I'm used to anthologies being hit-and-miss, but I think this one is moreso than most collections in that the only unifying characteristic of these stories is that the editor has deemed them "important". I found that my hit rate was much higher in the first volume than in the second or third, maybe because I'm a much bigger fan of the uncanny/dread/weird fiction than ghost stories. If that's your taste too, here are some of the stories that stand out in my memory:

The New Mother / Lucy Clifford
The Call of Cthulhu / H. P. Lovecraft
The Summer People / Shirley Jackson
Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crowd / Ray Bradbury
Vandy, Vandy / Manly Wade Wellman
The Yellow Wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born of Man and Woman / Richard Matheson
Good Country People / Flannery O'Connor
Mackintosh Willy / Ramsey Campbell
Smoke Ghost / Fritz Leiber
Crouch End / Stephen King
The Repairer of Reputations / Robert W. Chambers
The Beckoning Fair One / Oliver Onions