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The theme of public attention and appearance runs like a bright thread through nearly all of Oscar Wilde’s plays and stories. In The Importance of Being Earnest, it is far more important to be “Ernest” than to be earnest, because the name itself carries an aura of desirability: the illusion is more powerful than the reality. Throughout Wilde’s fiction, reality and illusion—truth and perception—exist in deliberate, often comic conflict. His characters care surprisingly little

Oscar Wilde was fascinated by the concept of duty—not by its nobility, but by its absurdity. He delighted in exposing the ridiculous extremes to which humans will go when they allow social or moral obligation to govern their lives. In his work, duty often becomes a source of comic tension, revealing how blindly adhering to socially constructed expectations can produce outcomes both absurd and unsettling. Wilde presents duty not as a moral compass but as a lens through which h

It’s 1982. The narrator, Steve Witowski (an alias), is a failed songwriter and fugitive, already trying to escape his past. One night he intervenes to save a woman named Victoria from a brutal assault by a seemingly unstoppable attacker. Rather than moving on, Steve becomes entangled with Victoria, who has just purchased a dilapidated church with a dark, haunting past. As Steve stays on to help with the renovation and the mysteries of the place, he discovers that Victoria--an

This post has been an extremely long time in coming. As I've mentioned in many previous articles, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is both my favorite story and the high-mark of my personal, literary expertise. Washington Irving has his own designated bookshelf in my living room (not including my collection of illustrated "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" editions), I was accepted into grad school based on the strength of a 20-page essay on Freudian subtexts in "Rip Van Winkle," and Irv

Even outside of supernatural fiction circles, “The Bottle Imp” is among Stevenson’s most celebrated short stories. Its reputation stands alongside other perennial classics of the short form—Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker,” Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” London’s “To Build a Fire,” and O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” Like these tales, Stevenson’s story is remembered for its taut suspense, ironic reversals, and unforgettable emo

“ Markheim ”  stands among Stevenson’s most psychologically intricate tales, fusing the moral unease of the Victorian conscience with the...

This year, behind the scenes at Oldstyle Tales Press, we’ve been quietly undertaking one of the most ambitious projects in our publishing...

Henry James’ ghost stories are almost always elegant and stately, wrapped in psychological tension and emotional complexity, and bereft...

Just months before he wrote The Turn of the Screw , Henry James penned its literary predecessor, a short story called “The Way it Came,”...

One of James’ favorite horror motifs was the object which had the power to influence the perception of its owner – literally. The subject...

For fifteen years after “The Ghostly Rental” (1876), Henry James placed himself under a self-imposed moratorium on supernatural fiction....

Sonia Haft Greene was a widowed Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who had survived a childhood hounded by antisemitism, her father’s death, her...

Jacobs was never one for a conventional ghost story. His horror tales are often marked by unexpected irony, chicanery, and twists. His...

Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on W. W. Jacobs is unmistakable and surfaces repeatedly throughout Jacobs’ body of work. Poe’s tales such as...

Jacobs’ penultimate horror tale belongs firmly to the esteemed tradition of the nervous homicide —a genre in which he had already shown a...

In a genre long haunted by glittering immortals and emotionally tormented antiheroes, The Last Breath Before Death  feels like a jolt...

W. F. Harvey's "August Heat" is a compact yet chilling entry in the tradition of Edwardian supernatural fiction, notable for its uncanny...

"Laura Silver Bell" artfully fuses the folkloric DNA of two of Le Fanu’s most haunting stories: "The Child that Went with the Fairies"...

Le Fanu’s ghost stories—like “Schalken the Painter”, “Green Tea,” and “Mr. Justice Harbottle”—are often seen as distinct from his...

Excerpted from one of Le Fanu’s most renowned novels, The House by the Churchyard , the following two episodes relate a series of strange...

“Ghost Stories of Chapelizod” is one of several small cameo collections of ghost legends that Le Fanu published during his life. The...

“A Drunkard’s Dream” is a phenomenal if unorthodox place to start a survey of Le Fanu’s supernatural tales, not only because it is among...

It was incumbent upon most Victorian supernaturalists to – sooner or later – create an occult detective who merged the qualities of Poe’s...

Dyson, a recurring character in Arthur Machen’s stories such as The Shining Pyramid  and The Red Hand , stands as an unusual and...