From solidly Weird tales of ghostly hauntings and unseen things to more subtle stories of lost children and malevolent housekeeping, Women’s Weird contained a vast range of subjects reflected through the lens of female experience.

“They talk about death being cold. It’s life that’s the cold thing.”

If it were possible to sum up Edith Nesbit’s horror fiction in a single line then this quote from one of her final tales would be as good an attempt as any. As Melissa Edmundson tells us in her introduction “[Nesbit’s] characters are always hiding something … whether it be a disappointment, a regret, a fear, a screen, or a crime.” The gaps these acts of hiding create become, inevitably, filled with the chill of ghosts but Nesbit’s unexpected statement that life, not death, is cold also indicates some of the contradictions at the heart of her own life.

Think of weird fiction and, probably without even realizing it, you will think of one thing: men. Whether it’s H. P. Lovecraft’s tentacled monstrosities, the decadent necromancies of Clark Ashton Smith or Algernon Blackwood’s eerie eco-horror, the canon of weird fiction, like many human endeavors, is dominated by male practitioners.

The Outcast and the Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-1938, the latest single-author collection from Handheld Press, makes for both an enchanting read, and something that may be a tough nut to crack for readers new to horror.

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural Stories, 1916-1924 by Elinor Mordaunt is a must-read for those who love older horror and weird fiction, and for those who just love a good ghost story.

Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937, published by Handheld Press, is a joy of a read that expands on women’s role in horror and the Weird.