Terror by Night (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural)

by Ambrose Bierce

Book Overview

Nothing is so improbable as what is true' Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1840225343
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.6" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

One of the Best Victorian Ghost Story Authors Out There!

I have recently been on a Victorian and Edwardian ghost story binge. I bought many of the Wordsworth editions. This is by far one of my very favorites. Many say M.R. James is the best ghost story writer out there, and while he is good, I really do prefer the Ambrose Bierce stories. You won't be disappointed in this collection. One comment on the quality of the paperback...the paper is cheaper and the bindings tend to split at the bottom with normal reading. Just a note if you are particular on your binding/cover qualities. Right now, this seems to be one of the only publishing houses seriously releasing these stories and the price is in accordance with the quality.

51 Brilliantly Cynical and Gruesome Tales

Wordsworth Editions, published in London, has a wonderful thing going with its current series entitled "Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural," bringing back into print short-story collections and full-length novels from such relatively unknown authors as Gertrude Atherton, Edith Nesbit, D.K. Broster, Marjorie Bowen, May Sinclair and Dennis Wheatley. The imprint's collection of horror tales from Ohio-born Ambrose Bierce is a very satisfying and generous one, gathering 51 of the author's more shuddery pieces, out of the 90 or so from his complete oeuvre. (Bierce never wrote any longer pieces, calling the novel, in typically cynical fashion, "a short story padded.") Bierce, who was born in 1842 and died mysteriously, most likely in Mexico, around 1914, wrote tales that have been elsewhere divided into three categories: Tales of Horror, Tall Tales and Tales of the Civil War, in which he fought with distinction on the Union side. But these three loose categories don't tell the full story; his most famous short piece, for example, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," while certainly being a tale of war, is also undeniably a psychological horror story. Indeed, a reader of this volume will quickly discern at least eight types of Bierce tales therein; more on that in a moment. All the stories in this collection display an extremely fine polish as regards writing technique (some of the tales may even be accused of being overwritten) and a cynical, often merciless worldview. The author was not nicknamed "Bitter Bierce" for nothing, and there is absolutely no way for the reader to predict whether or not any character, be it man, woman or child, will suffer a horrible fate. As no less a critic than H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Bierce's writing, in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature": "[There is in it] a rare strain of sardonic comedy and graveyard humour, and a kind of delight in images of cruelty and tantalising disappointment." And as David Stuart Davies mentions, in his well-written and informative intro to this edition, "His stories invariably turn on these strange and often heart-stopping twists of fate--twists that are calculated to shock and shake the reader out of a comfortable complacency...." As to those eight types of tales found in this volume, by far the most commonly encountered is the Ghost Tale, such as "A Baby Tramp," in which a mother's ghost lures its baby son on a cross-country pilgrimage; "The Moonlit Road," a murderous tale told from three vantages, including the dead wife; "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," in which another murdered wife (little love is lost in these grisly Bierce stories!) takes a hideous vengeance; and "Staley Fleming's Hallucination," which features what may be literature's earliest canine ghost. Then there are the purely Supernatural Tales, such as "The Spook House," with its unescapable room filled with corpses; "A Wireless Message," in which a man sees his wife's flaming doom from 1,000 miles away; and