I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist

Description

'The first thing my dazed eyes fell upon was the mirror of black glass... She held it so that I might gaze into its depths. And there, with a cry of amazement and fear, I saw the shadow of the Basilisk.' Through odysseys across dreamlike lands, Gothic love affairs haunted by the shadow of death and uncanny episodes from the Peak country, the portrait of a unique writer of the strange tale emerges. With his florid, illustrative style and powerful imagination, R. Murray Gilchrist's impact on the weird fiction genre is unmistakable - and yet his name fell into obscurity following his death. Exploring tales of annihilation and shattered identities, fatalistic romances, bewildering visions of the sublime and mythological evils preying on the innocent, this new anthology is a journey through an entrancing and influential oeuvre essential for any reader of the weird.

R. Murray Gilchrist (1867-1917) was a prolific writer, penning twenty-two novels, four regional guide books and six short story collections. He garnered high praise from contemporaries such as Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells for both his weird writing and his more prolific body of work celebrating the folklore and people of his home, the Peak District.