Fantastic Tales

Italo Calvino

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544231047
• Print ISBN:
  9780544152090

The acclaimed author presents "a rich and wide-ranging anthology" of 19th century fantasy and horror stories—with an original introduction for each ( Library Journal).
 
Vampires, ghosts, and other horrors abound in this collection of nineteenth-century fantastic literature, selected and edited by Italo Calvino, a twentieth-century master of the speculative. As Calvino explains in his introduction to this collection, "the true theme of the nineteenth-century fantastic tale is the reality of what we see: to believe or not to believe in phantasmagoric apparitions, to glimpse another world, enchanted or infernal, behind everyday appearances."
 
This anthology of twenty-six enchanting, uncanny, terrifying, and immortally entertaining short stories includes E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman," Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose," Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp," and many more, each with a introduction by Calvino.
 
"Impressive and utterly pleasing…Each story [Calvino] picks is absorbing, unique, and continually surprising."— Los Angeles Times

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Introduction by Italo Calvino
• The Visionary Fantastic of the Nineteenth Century
• The Story of the Demoniac Pacheco
• Autumn Sorcery
• The Sandman
• Wandering Willie’s Tale
• The Elixir of Life
• The Eye with No Lid
• The Enchanted Hand
• Young Goodman Brown
• The Nose
• The Beautiful Vampire
• The Venus of Ille
• The Ghost and the Bonesetter
• The Everyday Fantastic of the Nineteenth Century
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The Shadow
• The Signal-Man
• The Dream
• A Shameless Rascal
• The Very Image
• Night: A Nightmare
• A Lasting Love
• Chickamauga
• The Holes in the Mask
• The Bottle Imp
• The Friends of the Friends
• The Bridge-Builders
• The Country of the Blind
• Permissions Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Footnotes