Peter Clenott

THE TERROR BY NIGHT by E. F. Benson Although E. F. Benson's four volumes of short weird tales are acknowledged classics of their kind, original hardback editions are now difficult to obtain, and when copies are offered for sale the price is often prohibitive. Too, recent research has, to an extent, rendered them out of date, since over the past two decades nearly a score of previously uncollected stories have been unearthed, which need to be integrated within the Benson 'spook story' canon. The Ash-Tree Press 'Collected Spook S"tories', under the editorship of Jack Adrian, now brings together all of E. F. Benson's known tales of the strange and the supernatural into an extended five-volue set. The series features a radical rearranging of the stories themselves into their chronological order of publication and publication. THE TERROR BY NIGHT-the first volume in the series-covers the period between 1899 and 1911, and demonstrates Benson's early mastery of his craft, in such stories as 'Caterpillars', 'The Man Who Went Too Far', 'Gavon's Eve', and 'The Bus-Conductor', the basis for one of the stories in the classic supernatural film DEAD OF NIGHT in 1945. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.