Although not as widely famous as other genre masters (e.g. MR James and Walter de la Mare), William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) has been defined as “one of the greatest ghost story writers of the twentieth century.” Actually, only a portion of his  short fiction output (overall, sixty-four stories) can be classified under the label of “supernatural,” but some of his tales are still remembered as outstanding examples of the uncanny tale, namely The Beast with Five Fingers (which was also adapted in a classic horror movie) and August Heat (a renowned masterpiece of subtlety and premonition).

All thirty of Harvey’s supernatural stories are now collected in an elegant volume published by Tartarus Press, ever devoted to either reprint or launch classy fiction.

The volume is introduced by a lengthy and learned article by Richard Dalby, one of  the major experts in this area, who provides very interesting notes about Harvey’s life and career, as well as brief but insightful comments on many of the included tales. Indeed, after Dalby’s excellent Introduction, precious little remains to be said by your humble reviewer, who can only mention which ones, in his opinion, are the most accomplished among the tales reprinted therein.

Six to Six-Thirty is an atmospheric mini-thriller with a bitter taste and an ante litteram Hitchcockian character, Blind is a gloomy little gem about the melancholy of broken dreams and Unwinding a well crafted piece unearthing an ancient murder.

The collection includes a dark, classical ghost story (Across the Moors), tales of evil and witchcraft ( Sambo, The Flying Out of Mrs Barnard Hollis), a bitter variation on the theme of the deal with the devil (The Devil’s Bridge), a story of psychic vampirism (Miss Avenal), and an ingenuous psychological study disguised as a crime story (Double Demon).

The notorious Miss Cornelius is a complex tale of the paranormal, imbued with paranoia and madness, while The Tool offers a journey into the mysteries of memory, triggered by the accidental discovery of a murdered corpse.

I also enjoyed the extreme The Heart of the Fire, a sinister story of greed and loss revolving around the kitchen fire of a lonely inn, The Arm of Mrs Egan, a dark piece where the career of a mediocre doctor is supposedly affected by a curse from a woman whose child died because of the physician’s incompetence, and Account Rendered, a splendid tale disclosing the truth behind the recurrent desire of a strange gentleman to be put under anesthetic.

Harvey is indeed a master of the uncanny and the supernatural who is able to deal with a variety of eerie subjects and to produce solid, compelling fiction, the kind of fiction which, fortunately, will never go out of fashion.

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