There is an extraordinary unity in the work

of this great author. All his books deal with

the strange, supernatural, terror, macabre,

other-worldly. He is at his best in his shorter

tales and this selection of them was com-

piled by the author himself at his best.

Unlike other authors who seek to thrill us

with things uncanny but don t believe in

them, Algernon Blackwood s tales are im-

pregnated with a profound belief in the

supernatural which was their author s life-

long conviction.

The large public audience which now

exists for books on alternate states of con-

sciousness-yoga, meditation, cosmic con-

sciofJsness, hypnotism, magic, alchemy and

so on--that audience should be especially

interested in this author s imaginative works

about higher states of consciousness.

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was

formed in his struggle to free himself from

the stiflingly narrow Evangelical household

of his father, a British civil servant. At age

twenty he migrated to Canada and for the

next decade lived a perilous existence in

Canada and the United States. Then he

returned to England and began to write. His

very-first stories expressed his profound

belief in the supernatural--a supernatural

altogether different from that which had

gripped his father.

Seeming chance led him as a boy to a

copy of the Yoga of Patanjali and thereafter

a deep sense of Karma sustained him amid

all difficulties. A Hindu fellow-student taught

him spiritual exercises. A physician, his

teacher at Edinburgh, taught him the thera-

peutic uses of hypnotism.