Fantastic Tales: Visionary And Everyday

Description

Edited with an Introduction by Italo Calvino 'Describes imaginary worlds with the most extraordinary precision and beauty' Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books From tales of fabulous enchantments and supernatural horror to subtler, more psychological terrors, the best of nineteenth-century fantastic literature is collected here by Italo Calvino. These mysterious and macabre tales include Hoffmann's nightmarish 'The Sandman', Poe's terrifying 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and Dickens' chilling ghost story 'The Signal-Man', with relatively unknown works from celebrated writers including Honore de Balzac, Henry James, Sir Walter Scott, Guy de Maupassant and Robert Louis Stevenson, alongside lesser-known contributors. Each tale comes with a fascinating introduction by Italo Calvino. 'One of the most playful, intelligent and inventive minds in the whole of European fiction' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. One of the most respected writers of our time, his best-known works of fiction include Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985. A collection of Calvino's posthumous personal writings, The Hermit in Paris, was published in 2003.

'Describes imaginary worlds with the most extraordinary precision and beauty' - Gore Vidal 'One of the most playful, intelligent and inventive minds in the whole of European fiction' - Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday