The Willows

Nothing happens, and it is unbearable.Two men camp on a willow island in the Danube. The river rises. There are noises in the night. The island seems smaller in the morning. That is very nearly the whole of The Willows, and H. P. Lovecraft called it the finest weird tale in English without qualification.Algernon Blackwood spent his twenties close to starving in New York and came out of it certain of one thing: that the natural world is not scenery. It is inhabited, it is aware, and it has no interest in us whatever. He is the ancestor of everything we now call folk horror.Three stories, one argument made three times.The Willows (1907), a sandbank in the Danube and something that has no name and no shapeAncient Sorceries (1908), a small French town where the people are unhurried, watchful and curiously feline, and a mild Englishman who gets off the train for no reason he can explainThe Wendigo (1910), the Canadian bush, and a voice that comes back from far overheadThis annotated edition adds:An original introduction placing Blackwood between the Victorian ghost story and the cosmic horror that followed himA headnote before every storyA glossary of the places, peoples and beliefs the stories depend onH. P. Lovecraft on Blackwood, whom he called the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphereWe had strayed into some region where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us.