Tales Of The Wonder Club

The first of two volumes containing the complete Tales of the Wonder Club Tales of the Wonder Club was originally published as three volumes between 1899-1900 and all three books are present in this special Leonaur two volume set. These tales are unusual for late 19th century works; most of the stories are gothic with elements of the supernatural, weird, bizarre, horror or fantasy and some commentators have likened them to the work of J. Sheridan Le Fanu. An acknowledged 'grandfather of the supernatural, ' Le Fanu's work was typical of the early to mid-nineteenth century and the author of these volumes has paid homage to the master, in much the same way as did M. R. James, another fine writer of supernatural fiction. The potentially uninspiring pseudonym of the author of these well regarded books, 'Dryasdust, ' is used humorously, and with a nod to Sir Walter Scott; in fact Dryasdust was not his only nom-de-plume, he also wrote under the name M. Y. Halidom though he was in reality Englishman, Alexander Huth. In the period leading to the outbreak of the Great War, Huth wrote a number of supernatural novels, one of them, coincidentally, with the same title as that classic of the modern ghost story, The Woman in Black. Included in volume 1 are: The Spirit Lovers, The Headless Lady, The Haunted Stage Box, The Spirit Leg, Lost in the Catacombs, Buried Alive and seven more strange tales. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

The Wonder Club is a small clique of brotherhood which assembles some of the most eminent men who meet in a rather esteemed pub known as the "Headless Lady." The chief delight of this club was to tell or to listen to stories which were all more or less of the marvelous class, and which each took it by turn to relate to the rest. These are their stories: Volume I: The Phantom Flea—The Lawyer's Story The Spirit Lovers—The Doctor's Story Containing Mr. Parnassus's Poem, The Glacier King The Mermaid Palace; or, Captain Toughyarn's Dream The Headless Lady—The Artist's First Story The Demon Guide; or, the Gnome of the Mountain—The Geologist's Story The Pigmy Queen; A Fairy Tale—The Landlord's Daughter's Story The Haunted Stage Box—The Tragedian's Story The Spirit Leg—The Analytical Chemist's Story An Interlude Lost in the Catacombs—The Antiquary's Story Volume II: Buried Alive—The Landlord's Story Der Scharfrichter—The Artist's Second Story The Three Pauls—The Artist's Third Story The Waxen Image—The Hostess's Story In which occurs Mr. Parnassus' Ballad—The Chieftain's Destiny A Tale of the French Revolution—The Barber's Story Volume III: The Gipsy Queen—Mr. Blackdeed's New Play

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

"Talk of being buried alive, I could tell you a queer adventure that happened to myself, if you gentlemen would care to hear it." "Only be too glad, Jack," said Oldstone. "Out with it; there is nothing like a good story to beguile the time in weather like this." Our host, thus encouraged, drew his chair close to the fire, and his example was immediately followed by his guests. Then, refilling his yard of clay and lighting it in the fire, he gave one or two preliminary whiffs, and commenced his story thus: -- Well, gentlemen, when I was a youngster, that is to say, a lad of nineteen, I fell deeply in love with my Molly, who, though I say it, was the finest lass in the village and for miles round it. For all the world like my Helen, at her age, bless her dear heart! She was the daughter of a rich miller -- his only child. Well, it had been a long attachment, for Molly and I were play-mates when we was little, but when I grew to be about nineteen, and my father began to see that I was head over ears in love with Molly, he forbade me to see anymore of her, because he and old Sykes -- leastways, Molly's father, the miller -- wasn't friends, d'ye see.