The Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Horror Anthology

A Long List Of Shorts

The number of horror short stories written for the first half of the nineteenth century is fixed in time just as they are for any period in the past. No more will be written. In light of this, the horror short stories for this period can be quantified and are open to scholarly debate. Come one, come all. This is my attempt to define the best horror stories with an initial overview of how I went about it.

To find the best horror short stories of 1800-1849 is an aggressive undertaking. Yet it did not start out as all-encompassing as it first appears. The genesis of this anthology began as a simple idea. After editing Edgar Allan Poe’s Annotated and Illustrated Entire Short Stories and Poems, my interest was piqued as to just how good Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) really was within the horror genre. I wondered how much he had leapfrogged those who came before him and whether Poe had any equals while alive. Sure Poe’s horror stories are great and there is little disagreement in this regard, but how do they compare to the stories of his contemporaries? Poe lampooned many of his contemporaries in this genre, and for good measure. Yet Poe, one of America’s harshest literary critics in this time period, was quick to give credit where credit was due. A primary example is Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), Poe’s main American contemporary for horror short stories. Poe and Hawthorne caused readers to be chilled with tales of premature burials, borderlands of the mind, a deranged botanist, fate at the hands of the Spanish inquisitors, a plague of red death, the fountain of youth gone bad, a mad scientist, funerals at weddings and a minister who wears a black veil.

Though Poe was laudatory of Hawthorne’s short stories as being wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes, in Graham’s Magazine of April 1842, Hawthorne did not agree with all his criticisms of other writers. Four years later, on June 17, 1846, Hawthorne wrote Poe and confessed: I admire you rather as a writer of tales than as a critic upon them, I might often – and often do – dissent from your opinions in the later capacity, but could never fail to recognize your force and originality in the former.

Partly as a result of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne in America, the horror genre made great strides in short story form. Washington Irving (1783-1859) is another potential American contender, but he excelled in writing ghost stories, which are not included in this anthology. Poe recognized Irving’s talents in the same issue of Graham’s Magazine: With rare exception — in the case of Mr. Irving’s ‘Tales of a Traveler’ and a few other works of a like cast — we have had no American tales of high merit. We have had no skilful compositions — nothing which could bear examination as works of art.

In Europe more horror writers—a number who were precursors to Poe and Hawthorne—excelled in penning fine short stories in this genre. From Germany, Ernst T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) was the acknowledged forefather to Poe and Hawthorne and many others in Europe. Hoffmann wrote about mad alchemists, an insane duchess, and took doppelganger stories to new heights. Like Washington Irving, he is best remembered today as a ghost story author. Hoffmann did, however, write one short horror tale called The Deserted House that rises to the high demands of this collection. Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827), another German writer, was certainly influenced by the horror of Hoffmann. He penned a number of fantastic stories in his brief but stellar career as a man of letters. He would have been one of the all time greats in this space if he had lived even into his thirties. Hauff’s tale The Severed Hand is one of the best horror stories of 1800-1849 and is included here.

In France, Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) explored tales of family beheadings, the blending of religious themes with the supernatural, and insane artists. Aren’t we all? Oscar Wilde stated in his Decay of Dying: A Dialogue of 1889: Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century as we know it is largely an invention of Balzac. His terrifying story The Mysterious Mansion tops all other tales of a trapped wrongdoer in this period, including Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado that was published years later. The Mysterious Mansion is planted firmly in this collection along with El Verdugo. France also gave the genre Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), who bore a striking resemblance to Honoré de Balzac in both appearance and beach ball body. Gautier wrote a number of good horror novellas, yet his short horror stories fall . . . well . . . short of greatness. The Mummy’s Foot of 1840 is his best short horror tale. Frenchman Prosper Mérimée (1802-1870) penned a number of good horror short stories with none rising to the level of greatness required in this anthology. His short war tale 1829, The Taking of Redoubt, is one of his best. Eight years later he would pen "La Vénus d’Ille," which became one of his most popular short stories.

In Scotland, James Hogg (1770-1835) wrote many fine short stories in the horror genre. One of his best is The Fords of Callum that was first published in 1837. Even more famous today than Hogg, is the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Still, neither of these superior writers penned a horror tale that rose to the level of this collection.

Ireland gave us Thomas Crofton Croker (1798-1854) who focused on the retelling of Irish legends, which are not complete without the adventures of banshees and fairies. These are cherished for their historical value in the horror genre, but mostly lack in originality and fullness of story. The fairies Croker gives us in The Legend of Knockgrafton are deliciously devilish in their reactions.

While English author Mary Shelley (1797-1851) gave us Frankenstein’s monster in novel form, her short stories in this genre are largely a disappointment. Shelley’s countryman, Dr. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), penned a few gothic horror stories, which ultimately fail for being overwritten and do not rise to the level of this anthology. Similar to Mary Shelley, at a relatively young age Mathew Gregory Lewis gave us a classic gothic novel titled The Monk. The short horror stories of Lewis, however, tend to be drawn out and contain only flashes of terror. The Anaconda of 1808 is one of his best. Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) is another UK author who wrote in this period and was very popular. While he did not give us many short tales of horror, The Legend of the Bell Rock is a solid tale as is The Story of the Greek Slave. Marryat’s The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains is perhaps the greatest werewolf tale for this half century and is included in Shifters: The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849. Charles Dickens, though not considered a horror author, wrote an excellent story of revenge that made this collection. It is The Old Man’s Tale About the Queer Client and was collected in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

I would be remiss by not paying homage in this anthology to a highly overlooked English author of the time—George Soane (1789-1860). He is primarily known as a playwright and scholarly translator of foreign poems and operas into English. Soane’s strained relationship with his famous architect father, John Soane, deflected much needed attention away from his fiction. It also didn’t help his literary reputation when he started publishing many of his short stories anonymously. They were also spread out over a period of decades. They were first collected in three volumes titled, The Last Ball, and Other Stories of 1841. They are all produced at a high level. There is hardly a bad story in the lot. This is the finest, overlooked collection of horror, ghost and fantasy short stories by one author during the period in question. The Lighthouse is Soane’s best horror tale and is included here. Another is the excellent Recollections of a Night Fever that is worth a read on a dark night, as well as The Singular Trial of Francis Ormiston.

Who was the best of them all? Who was the king or queen of the foundation builders of the short horror story? Edgar Allan Poe. As you read the stories contained in this anthology you will quickly recognize just how high Edgar Allan Poe towered above all others writing in this space. The difficulty with Poe is not figuring out which of his stories rise to the level of this collection, but rather which of his stories to exclude from it. In my opinion Poe has amazingly penned nearly thirty percent of the best horror short stories in this time period and this is without the inclusion of his classic stories: A Descent into the Maelström (found in Masaerion: The Best Science Fiction Stories 1800-1849), The Black Cat, and The Cask of Amontillado, which all could have made the list. The Mask of the Red Death is Poe’s finest ghost story and it is included in Phantasmal: The Best Ghost Stories 1800-1849. Though Poe towered above his competitors, any best anthology must consider one-hit wonders; those who may have written a great short horror story and slunk into obscurity in the first half of the nineteenth century.

In this quest I turned to the best magazines and journals of the day. Two of the most popular British texts, and those with reputations for publishing tales of terror, were Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine when it began in 1817) and the Edinburgh Review. Blackwood’s became known for publishing sensational tales of horror. At times they were overwritten bunk. Poe went so far as to lampoon the magazine in his How to Write a Blackwood’s Article, which he published in 1842. Both of these leading British magazines provide a wide list of stories for the time period under consideration. The Antheneum, or the Spirit of the English Magazines was another British publication of wide circulation that contained tales of terror.

In the United States, Atkinson’s Casket published the best stories from other magazines and journals. It also published a number of original tales. Given the lack of international copyright protection during this period, Atkinson’s Casket also freely published horror stories from Europe, including some of the best from Blackwood’s. In line with its macabre title, a number of these stories were tales of horror and the supernatural.

Over three hundred short horror stories have been reviewed for this anthology. They are listed along with their respective author and earliest publication date, if available. So what are the criteria used in deciding whether a short story would be considered for this anthology?

Fear is first. It has been our oldest and most dramatic of human emotions since Adam and Eve fell trembling at the presence of God in the Garden of Eden. It is the emotion that is intertwined in all horror stories. A grand horror story therefore must evoke a sudden sense of fear at some point. This often takes the form of a shocking ending, or a pervasive sense of fear or dread throughout the story. Next, there can be no fear unless one feels for the protagonist of the story. The deeper connection the reader has to the protagonist, the greater the ability of the writer to invoke fear in the reader. This is largely why Charles Dickens’s The Old Man’s Tale About the Queer Client made this collection. Who better to make readers care about the characters in a few pages than Dickens? Last, the writing of the story, the actual text on the page, must be at a high level. The stories picked for this anthology meet all three criteria.

That being said, a great horror story does not require blood and gore, or even the supernatural. The Pit and the Pendulum is a fine example of a horror story lacking both. It does, however, contain heaps of rats, which is always welcomed in a horror tale. The Minister’s Black Veil is a shining example from Nathaniel Hawthorne of a story devoid of murder or the supernatural that still leaves a sticky residue of dread long after the story is put down.

Tight parameters were placed on what stories would even be considered in this anthology. It does not contain any story over fifty pages. Short stories only. Poe was quick to laud short fiction in his April 1842 review of Twice Told Tales in Graham’s Magazine: "We have always regarded the Tale (using this word in its popular acceptation) as affording the best prose opportunity for display of the highest talent. This anthology does not contain stories of ghosts, werewolves, the devil, witches, vampires, fantasy, murder mysteries or science fiction. The later explains why William Mumford’s The Iron Shroud is not included. Its futuristic mechanisms necessitate that the story be placed in the sci-fi genre despite its horrific elements. No excerpts from novels, which are typically called fragments, are included here. For my purposes it is acceptable, however, to take a story from a long narrative that combines or links multiple short stories such as Dickens’s Pickwick Papers or Arabian Nights" by William Hauff. Finally, only fiction stories are included that have been translated into the English language at some point.

As you begin reading the list of stories considered for this anthology, you will notice that there are some horror gems that failed to make the cut, but are excellent stories nonetheless. They are not to be forgotten.

Please read them for yourself and make your own decision as to whether the horror short stories contained in this anthology are the greatest for the period in review. No anthology, no matter how scholarly and open in regards to the stories considered, will be without controversy. Hopefully you will agree that this collection hits closer to the mark than the others.

Andrew Barger

Edgar Allan Poe

(1809-1849)

Introduction

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The first story in this collection is about flirting with death. Who better to pen it than Poe? At the time it was written the medical community was experimenting with putting patients under magnetic sleep so they would not feel pain during surgery. Purported cases of mesmeric treatment were spreading across New England. Poe, a literary practical joker, was quick to play on the misguided beliefs of the medical community and society at large.

When the story was published in the American Review of 1845, it garnered much attention from practicing mesmerists, who so badly wanted the story to be true. One of the most prominent, Robert Collyer, queried Poe from Boston on December 16, 1845: Your account of M. Valdemar’s case has been universally copied in this city, and has created a very great sensation. He then asked Poe to confirm that the story was true to put at rest the growing impression that your account is merely a splendid creation of your own brain, not having any truth in fact.

Poe placed Collyer’s letter in the Broadway Journal of December 27, 1845, and responded to it there. We have no doubt that Mr. Collyer is perfectly correct in all that he says – and all that he desires us to say – but the truth is, there was a very small modicum of truth in the case of M. Valdemar – which, in consequence, may be called a hard case – very hard for M. Valdemar, for Mr. Collyer, and ourselves.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, which followed on the heels of Poe’s Mesmeric Revelation, was reprinted seven times in December of 1845 alone.

In 1846 it was reprinted another three times. Philip Pendleton Cooke read the story while hunting and had this to add in his letter to Poe dated August 4, 1846, "The ‘Valdemar Case’ I read in a number of your Broadway Journal last winter – as I lay in a Turkey blind, muffled to the eyes in overcoats, &c., and pronounce it without hesitation the most damnable, vraisemblable, horrible, hair-lifting, shocking, ingenious chapter of fiction that any brain ever conceived, or hands traced. That gelatinous, viscous sound of man’s voice! there never was such an idea before. That story scared me in broad day, armed with a double-barrel Tryon Turkey gun. What would it have done at midnight in some old ghostly countryhouse? I have always found some one remarkable thing in your stories to haunt me long after reading them."

Yet, as Poe admitted in a letter to Arch Ramsay on December 30th of the same year, ‘Hoax’ is precisely the word suited to M. Valdemar’s case. The story appeared originally in ‘The American Review’, a Monthly Magazine, published in this city. The London papers, commencing with the ‘Morning Post’ and the ‘Popular Record of Science’, took up the theme. The article was generally copied in England and is now circulating in France. Some few persons believe it–but I do not–and don’t you.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

(1845)

Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a miracle had it not-especially under the circumstances. Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or until we had farther opportunities for investigation – through our endeavors to effect this – a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations, and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.

It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts – as far as I comprehend them myself. They are, succinctly, these:

My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the subject of Mesmerism; and, about nine months ago it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission: – no person had as yet been mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity – the last in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences.

In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the well-known compiler of the Bibliotheca Forensica, and author (under the nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of Wallenstein and Gargantua. M. Valdemar, who has resided principally at Harlaem, N.Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme sparseness of his person – his lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair – the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment.

On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. His will was at no period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, I could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted.

When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my surprise, for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His disease was if that character which would admit of exact calculation in respect to the epoch of its termination in death; and it was finally arranged between us that he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the period announced by his physicians as that of his decease.

It is now rather more than seven months since I received, from M. Valdemar himself, the subjoined note:

MY DEAR P—,

You may as well come now. D— and F— are agreed that I cannot hold out beyond tomorrow midnight; and I think they have hit the time very nearly.

VALDEMAR

I received this note within half an hour after it was written, and in fifteen minutes more I was in the dying man’s chamber. I had not seen him for ten days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the brief interval had wrought in him. His face wore a leaden hue; the eyes were utterly lusterless; and the emaciation was so extreme that the skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. His expectoration was excessive. The pulse was barely perceptible. He retained, nevertheless, in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical strength. He spoke with distinctness – took some palliative medicines without aid – and, when I entered the room, was occupied in penciling memoranda in a pocket-book. He was propped up in the bed by pillows. Doctors D– and F– were in attendance.

After pressing Valdemar’s hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and obtained from them a minute account of the patient’s condition. The left lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in its upper portion, was also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a mass of purulent tubercles, running one into another. Several extensive perforations existed; and, at one point, permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken place. These appearances in the right lobe were of comparatively recent date. The ossification had proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it had been discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three previous days. Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of aneurism of the aorta; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both physicians that M. Valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then seven o’clock on Saturday evening.

On quitting the invalid’s bed-side to hold conversation with myself, Doctors D– and F– had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been their intention to return; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the patient about ten the next night.

When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject of his approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment proposed. He still professed himself quite willing and even anxious to have it made, and urged me to commence it at once. A male and a female nurse were in attendance; but I did not feel myself altogether at liberty to engage in a task of this character with no more reliable witnesses than these people, in case of sudden accident, might prove. I therefore postponed operations until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical student with whom I had some acquaintance, (Mr. Theodore L–l,) relieved me from farther embarrassment. It had been my design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but I was induced to proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my conviction that I had not a moment to lose, as he was evidently sinking fast.

Mr. L–l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes of all that occurred, and it is from his memoranda that what I now have to relate is, for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim.

It wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient’s hand, I begged him to state, as distinctly as he could, to Mr. L–l, whether he (M. Valdemar) was entirely willing that I should make the experiment of mesmerizing him in his then condition.

He replied feebly, yet quite audibly, Yes, I wish to be I fear you have mesmerized" –