Book Review: Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937
There are certain authors who have become established gateways that readers pass through on their road to Weird fiction: H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, to name a few. Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937, the second of the Women’s Weird anthologies published by Handheld Press, doubles as both an attempt to expand the understanding of women’s role in the development of the Weird and is a masterfully put together work that was a joy to read.
Published alongside the British Weird collection, Women’s Weird 2, edited by Dr. Melissa Edmundson, features 13 compelling skin-crawling stories from women across the world. Criteria for inclusion in the anthology included the stories being written by women between 1890 to 1940 roughly, but in this book there was also emphasis on a wider geographical range.
Edmundson, who has her Ph.D. in Victorian literature and serves as a lecturer in English literature at Clemson University, opens Women’s Weird 2 with an absolutely riveting introduction on the salient points of women writers in the genre; the slippery nature of these stories; and the unique roles of place, trauma and spirit. Brief biographies of the included authors also provide snapshots of the range of geography, hailing from Canada to British-occupied India. Edmundson also has my personal gratitude for modernizing punctuation a bit, as I do love older horror fiction, but there are times when that same material reads like a maze.
It is genuinely difficult to select favorite stories from this collection, as each draws upon different cultural and geographical references and therefore has its own strength. I have a particular soft spot for Edith Stewart Drewry’s “The Twin-Identity,” which features a police-woman who receives haunting, unexpected help in her search for a killer; and Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Green Bowl,” in which a cozy adventure turns dark and strange due to the titular object. The chill these stories invoke is also perfect Halloween season reading, and will continue to haunt the reader long into the drear slog of the rest of the year.
The primary strength of the Women’s Weird collections is at the intersection of an expert-curated anthology and making this material accessible to worldwide audiences. In helping the average reader rediscover a critical part of the past of the Weird, collections like this will heavily influence how the genre continues to develop. We will always have our Weird essentials, but with these collections, we are starting to get an idea of the bigger picture, and I, for one, cannot wait to see where this influence and understanding lead us. Times are weird, and our fiction is only bound to get Weirder.
Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937, and by extension its publisher, Handheld Press, serves as an excellent resource for those new to Weird fiction looking for a curated experience, and genre veterans looking to uncover new gems. Edmundson’s introduction is both illuminating and demonstrates a mastery of the material, setting the stage for an anthology that is clearly pieced together with care.
I received a copy of Women’s Weird 2 in exchange for an honest review.
Review written by Laura Kemmerer
Laura tuned into horror with an interest in what these movies and books can tell us about ourselves and what societies fear. She is most interested in horror focused around the supernatural, folklore, the occult, Gothic themes, haunted media, landscape as a character, and hauntology (focusing on lost or broken futures).
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