I'm happy to announce that my latest anthology: Crypt Classics: Best 19th Century Horror Stories Annotated is published! It contains shocking tales from the 19th century published in the English language, including those from popular American and Victorian authors. To my knowledge, this has never been done before. So how did this all come about?
In 2010 I was presented a horrific dare that I could not do it. It had never been done before and would be nearly impossible. It's only a hundred years and hundreds of scary stories, many buried in long forgotten magazines and journals. "What was it?" (to swipe a title from one of the stories at the heart of the dare).
To be fair, I had to address the dare in stages. I first began by focusing on the first 50 years of the 19th century. Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1850 This anthology was published in 2010. Six years later I tacked the back-half of the century and published the Best Horror Short Stories 1850-1899. Step two was complete, yet it still took me eight more years to publish my anthology of the best horror stories for the entire century.
The collection includes:
- Unearthing the Horror Short Story (2024) by Andrew Barger (Editor's introduction.)
- The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe (The Godfather of Goth tells a horrific tale of mesmerism.)
- The Severed Hand (1826) by Wilhelm Hauff (One of the great German horror story writers of the 19th century spins a tale that will not be forgotten.)
- The Thunder-Struck and the Boxer (1832) by Samuel Warren (One of the first great stories of the apocalypse.)
- The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe (The best character generation in Poe's illustrious career meets his fate.)
- The Great God Pan (1894) by Arthur Machen (Mythic horror that gained effusive praise from H. P. Lovecraft.)
- The Pit and the Pendulum (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe (You will never look at the Spanish Inquisition the same way again.)
- What Was It? (1859) by Fitz James O’Brien (Sometimes the worst horror is one you can't see.)
- The Spider of Guyana (1857) by Erckmann-Chatrian (The first giant spider horror story is one of its best.)
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe (A brother and sister nightmare you will never forget.)
- The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Explore the depths of insanity.)
- Green Tea (1871) by Joseph Le Fanu (One of the most haunting horror stories by the Irish master.)
- Pollock and the Porroh Man (1897) by H. G. Wells (Wells takes us deep into the jungle and its wrought supernatural horror.)
- His Unconquerable Enemy (1889) by W. C. Morrow (A fiendish tale of torture sees Morrow at his best.)
- Horror Short Stories Considered (Andrew concludes the horror anthology by listing every horror short story he read to pick the very best.)
Read them if you dare and if you have already read some of them in past, now would be a good time to re-read them. They are that good.
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