The Penguin Red Classics, or the Gothic Classics, or Red Classics, depending on where you look and who you ask is a series of 10 classic horror books published in 2008 by the Penguin Group.
And I have been reading them for pretty much that long. Or rather, I picked up the Red Classic edition of the Dunwich Horror just over 10 years ago when still in college and I knew nothing of Lovecraft. I was in for a few shocks let me tell you. Up until then I had primarily spent my time in the realms of fantasy and, in the store where I was supposed to do some study-shopping, I saw the striking cover, I read the ominous title and though I thought to myself, well that's a silly author name, there was still something about it and so I proceeded to take the book home with me.
And it genuinely terrified me. There are precious few books that have actually managed to get that kind of a rise out of me, and this one is still one of the best.
The Dunwich Horror collects a bunch of good Lovecraft stories, of which my favourites, to this day are the titular Dunwich Horror and the Dreams in the Witch House. I remember being thoroughly creeped out and yet also strangely drawn to, and wanting to know more of, the secretive business on Whateley farm, its strange inhabitants and hints of occult and eldritch lore, and then that mad ending; it was all so darkly imaginative. The Dreams in the Witch House then was something that made me feel more uneasy than that it terrified me, at least right up until the final scenes which have such delicious tension building, and which ended in a genuine memorable moment of shock. Brown Jenkin is still one of those all-time-great monsters, and it is still surprising to me that he isn't more well known. Lovecraft really turned out to have a knack for shocking the reader with his final lines.
So, with this edition and with pretty much these 2 stories, my love for all things Lovecraft was born. Here is where it all began. I chewed through Lovecraft stories on loan from a friend and later also bought complete editions for my own.
But at the time I also bought 2 other books. The house on the Borderlands and the Masque of Red Death. I had already been familiar with Poe, or maybe I hadn't been, I'm honestly rather vague on that. Either way Poe's Masque of Red Death is my favourite of all of Poe's stories and pretty much all of the stories in here are absolute classics. Tell-tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, Pit and Pendulum, Black Cat, Eleonora, Oval Portrait, Fall of the House of Usher and even a few others. Poe doesn't need much attention here, because he's still simply one of the best in horror literature. Anyone who hasn't read anything by him has missed out.
The House on the Borderlands on the other hand, I knew nothing about. It just looked and sounded like a haunted house type situation, 'the Borderlands' of the title hinting at isolation and probably some weird goings-on. And so, knowing nothing I jumped in. And four hours later (yeah, I do read slow), 2 o' clock at night I finished the book. And I loved it, and afterwards I couldn't sleep.
The book wasn't at all what I had expected. There was no haunting, except there sort of was, but not really, and the book definitely leaned into more of a sci-fi vibe than a horror one, but the thing I remember most of all was the profound sense of awe that the book left me with. The impression I was left with was vast beyond imagining. And yet, some fucker had thought it up. The House on the Borderlands is still one of my all-time favourite pieces of fiction, and though it is eerie, it's more into overwhelming the reader than giving them scares.
And so, figuring these were all going to be as phenomenal as the first three books I had read, they became my go-to horror pile over the years. Though not one of them ended up bowling me over as either of the first three did, they were accomplished enough to have left me with some impressions. And all of them bad. But Levi, I hear you say, I thought you said they were accomplished, to which I respond, yeah, accomplished in pissing me off.
The Lair of the White Worm came next, which was a very bizarre novel, though I was taken enough with it at the time. However, there were enough niggles to leave me with a vague sense of disappointment. After that came Vernon Lee's Virgin of the Seven Daggers, which left me so bored and annoyed that I nearly half a dozen times threw the book out of the window instead of finishing it. To this day I have only the vaguest impressions of the ghost of Lucrezia Borgia haunting some church or other, and I'm fine with not remembering any more. Even thinking about my experience with the novel has irritated me. Then came Marsh's The Beetle and I nearly gave up on acquiring and reading the remaining Penguin Red Classics completely. Long story short; it was boring, and fairly unimaginative, although I read that it has recently become a go-to novel for readers interested in gender identity in their gothic reading.
I made one last attempt with Wilkie Collins' The Haunted Hotel and then threw my hat in the ring.
Now, granted it probably was my fault. Something to do with expectation and patience, but I've come to almost dislike these four. I'm generally of the opinion that any piece of literature has merit, but then I do only tend to pick up the best of the best, and don't wade through cookie cutter bullshit like most people these days. So, even though my time with these four had not been good, I'm aware enough of how I was at the time that I can concede that I would've had a better time had I been more open to it.
And so, even though I didn't have much interest in completing the series at this point, I felt bound to continue anyway, and so this year I forced myself to purchase the remaining three and getting them done by October. And I did.
The Spook House and MR James' the Haunted Doll's House were both pretty standard horror collections. And I'm wondering if desensitization isn't just to blame for my take on that. They were well written but their contents mostly have been presented in one form or other in the years since they've been published that all of it felt like treading water.
At this point I've seen and read so much horrific stuff that these works, so stiff and so reminiscent of a different age, couldn't help but start at a disadvantage.
However, they're still easily a cut in quality over the last 4 books that I'd read in the series.
Ambrose Bierce's collection of short stories in particular had a few rather inventive and memorable stories: Chickamauga, A Jug of Syrup, Three and One are One, the Thing at Nolan, the Affair at Coulter's Notch, Night-Doings at Deadman's and others were funny, and sad, and horrible by turns, frequently having elements of war and hauntings, and which were all really well written.
MR James' collection of stories I can't remember much about, even though I read it this year. Looking at the index I believe that I was quite partial to The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, but that I was disappointed enough with the titular short story that I wish that either of the two opening short stories had been given honour of title. Oh wait! Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance was definitely a very good one, a story where a man finds a relic of evil at the center of a maze, with definite hints of Biblical evil, which is always my kind of thing, and the reason why I remembered it.
And then, lastly, the final one; Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch.
And though I can concede it's an excellent collection of short stories, the titular tale only taking up about 100 pages of the total 240, I didn't quite enjoy reading them. Don't get me wrong here, because they all ended up being exceptionally good, but the stories all tended to be rather depressing, the horror only coming from the abominable circumstances of the main characters' lives than any kind of supernatural force.
The writing style was also so belaboured that I only started to pick up speed when I made a conscious alteration to alter my usually labourious reading manner into something a bit faster.
I'll tell you, it's weird to have to do that, to only be able to enjoy a specific kind of writing by shutting part of your mind off, or something. But when I managed it Gaskell's tales became rather engaging narratives. Lois the Witch in particular, which is a fictionalized account of the Salem Witch Trials through the eyes of a newcomer in town, was pretty damn powerful. When it was over I could understand how this all had happened, I understood the Mass hysteria, and I understood why people would, without torture, admit to being witches, when in reality they were just frightened and confused. There's an awareness of the psychological side of the events here that reminded me of The Turn of the Screw, though where that book leaves things up to interpretation, this one, bound to history as it is, wasn't able to do so.
So.
That ends my look at the 10 Penguin Red Classics.
From best to worst:
1. The Dunwich Horror
2. The Masque of Red Death
3. The House on the Borderlands
4. Lois the Witch
5. The Spook House
6. The Haunted Doll's House
7. The Lair of the White Worm
8. The Beetle
9. The Haunted Hotel
10. The Virgin of the Seven Daggers
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