None of Jean Lorrain's biographers has contrived to discover exactly when or why he began taking ether, or how much of it he took before realising (too late) that it was an extremely bad idea. The drug certainly helped provide the feverish, nightmarish atmosphere of these wonderfully decadent and sophisticated tales, and many of the apparitions with which they are populated.

Brian Stableford's superb translations represent the first appearance in English of Jean Lorrain's ether-inspired 'nightmares', originally collected as Sensations et Souvenirs in 1895. The later tales...

Praised by Borges, the Unkind Tales of LEon Bloy were produced in a phase of literary evolution that was exploratory and experimental, and hence intrinsically exciting. Lingering on the frontiers of Decadence, Naturalism, and Symbolism, these stories of the damned and the foolish, of terrible fates and ludicrous situations, helped map out the terrain of the conte cruel and are, probably, the author's most noteworthy work.

In this, an authoritative translation of the volume originally published as Histories dEsobligeantes, Brian Stableford, in both his insightful...

There is nothing else quite like the short stories of Lady Dilke in the annals of English literature, and even readers who have little sympathy with their stylistic affectations, allegorical pretensions and harrowing conclusions are likely to admit that they have a peculiar fascination. Those who find some resonance in their psychological ambience might easily think them touched with genius. The simple fact that they are so unusual is a great asset in itself, from the viewpoint of lovers of exotica, but they are not peculiar merely for the sake of cultivating unconventionality. Seen as an...