Back from the shouting floor and ceiling came the chorus of images that stormed and clamoured for expression. Jones lay still and listened; he let them come. There was nothing else to do.

Algernon Blackwood was one of the most influential writers of twentieth-century weird and supernatural fiction. He once told a correspondent that every story he wrote was based on either a personal experience or that of someone he knew, and thus the vast collection of short stories and novels published in his lifetime can be seen to form a kind of autobiography. In this collection of his most atmospheric and uneasy tales, Mike Ashley provides the facts of Blackwood's life which inspired each story including experiences as an intelligence agent in the First World War and adventures in New York to tell the parallel tale of the author's lifetime of the supernatural.