Robert Aickman

Robert Fordyce Aickman (born June 24 1914 - died February 26 1981) was a British author of supernatural short stories he liked to describe as "strange".

Bibliography

Altogether, twelve collections of Aickman's "strange stories" have now been published. Of these books, eight are original collections and four are reprint collections (one of which?Painted Devils: Strange Stories?consists of revised versions of stories which appeared in earlier volumes).

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The eight collections are as follows:

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• We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories, London: Jonathan Cape 1951
• Dark Entries: Curious and Macabre Ghost Stories, London: Collins 1964
• Powers of Darkness: Macabre Stories, London: Collins 1966
• Sub Rosa: Strange Tales, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd 1968
• Cold Hand in Mine: Eight Strange Stories, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd 1975
• Tales of Love and Death, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd 1977
• Intrusions: Strange Tales, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd 1980
• Night Voices: Strange Stories, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd 1985

The reprint collections are:

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• Painted Devils: Strange Stories, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1979 (revised stories)
• The Wine-Dark Sea, New York: Arbor House/William Morrow 1988
• The Unsettled Dust, London: Mandarin 1990
• The Collected Strange Stories, Carlton-in-Coverdale: Tartarus Press/Durtro Press 1999 (two volumes)

A critical essay on Aickman's fiction appears in S. T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001).

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The original collections of short stories, particularly the first four, all command high prices on the used book market, as does the extremely rare novel The Late Breakfasters. The most accessible avenue to acquiring Aickman's stories is via the excellent two volume Tartarus Press complete edition mentioned above. In 2001, Tartarus also reissued the first volume of Aickman's autobiography, The Attempted Rescue in a handsome edition with a foreword by writer and Aickman enthusiast Jeremy Dyson, of British comedy quartet The League of Gentlemen.

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