Thursday, October 30, 2014

The Shape of Fear

Elia Wilkinson Peattie - The Shape of Fear, and Other Ghostly Tales (1898)

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Another one I haven't read and hope it doesn't turn out too badly.  Couldn't resist for a couple of reasons - Peattie was the Chicago Tribune's first woman reporter and there's a story here called "The Grammatical Ghost".  It turns out that this story has been reprinted a few times but as far as I could see none of her other fiction (though almost certainly I'm overlooking something considering how obsessive ghost story fans are) until 2013 when Lightning Press in England issued a collection of her supernatural stories.  In 2005 University of Nebraska Press put out an anthology of selected writings, mostly journalism, that seems to overlook her fiction (though it does include "Grand Island and Its Beets: The County Seat of Hall and What Beet Cultivation Has Done" and "The Women on the Farms: A Chapter of Advice for Them Which City Women Need Not Read").