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D K Broster's Weird fiction has long been forgotten, but she wrote some of the most impressive British supernatural short stories published between the wars. Melissa Edmundson, editor of Women's Weird, Women's Weird 2, and Helen Simpson's The Outcast and The Rite, all published by Handheld, has curated a selection of Broster's best and most terrifying work. From the Abyss contains twelve stories, including:
- 'The Window', in which a soldier wanders into a deserted chateau, which does not approve.
- 'The Pavement', in which the protectress of a Roman mosaic cannot bear to let her burden go.
- 'The Taste of Pomegranates' draws two women into the very, very far-off past.
- 'From the Abyss', in which two lost women may be the same person.
- 'Clairvoyance', in which the ornamental weaponry in Strode Manor is more than merely decoration.
About the author
Dorothy Kathleen Broster was born in 1877 near Liverpool. She earned a degree in Modern History at Oxford, and volunteered as a nurse in the First World War. Her name as a novelist was made by her bestselling Jacobite trilogy, The Flight of the Heron (1925), The Gleam in the North (1927), and The Dark Mile (1929). Most of her supernatural fiction appeared in two collections: A Fire of Driftwood (1932) and Couching at the Door (1942). She died in 1950.
Summary
D K Broster was one of the great British historical novelists of the twentieth century, but her Weird fiction has long been forgotten. Melissa Edmundson has collected eleven of Broster's best stories from her supernatural writing.
