Classic Weird 2 - Paperback

E. F. BENSON was born in 1867 at Wellington College in Berkshire, England, where his father (who later became Archbishop of Canterbury) was the headmaster. Benson studied archaeology at Kings College, Cambridge and at the British School of Archaeology in Athens, where he came to know Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde. After visiting Henry James in the village of Rye, Benson eventually settled there until his death in 1940; Rye was the model for Tilling, the setting of his six popular Mapp and Lucia novels. Benson published more than one hundred books on various subjects, but remains best known for Mapp and Lucia.

Vernon Lee (1856-1935)--the pen name of the writer Violet Paget--was a travel writer, novelist, musician, and critic. Primarily remembered today for her supernatural fiction and her work on aesthetics, she spent most of her life in Florence, Italy, where she cultivated friendships with artists such as Telemaco Signorini, Edith Wharton, and Henry James. One of the first to bring the concept of Einfühlung, or empathy, into English criticism, she was an outspoken follower of Walter Pater's aestheticism and vocal pacifist until her death in 1935. Gretchen Felker-Martin is a Massachusetts-based bestselling horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 Best Book of 2022 by Vulture, and was one of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. Her sophomore novel, Cuckoo, debuted on the USA Today bestseller list. You can read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in TIME, The Outline, Nylon, and more. Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. Her queer horror novelette Helen House was named one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2022 by NBC News. She is the managing editor of Autostraddle, an assistant fiction editor at Foglifter, and the former managing editor of TriQuarterly. Her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and others. Some of her culture writing can be found in The Cut, The A.V. Club, Vulture, Refinery29, and Vice, and she previously worked as a restaurant reporter for Eater NY. She was a 2023-2024 Tin House Reading Fellow and a 2023 Lambda writer in residence. Her fiction will be featured in the upcoming anthology Be Gay, Do Crime, out from Dzanc Books in 2025.

Edith Wharton (1862­-1937) was a brilliant American writer known for such works as The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. She became the first woman to win a Pulitzer when she was awarded the 1921 Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence. A member of the New York elite, Wharton funneled her experiences into vivid portrayals and critiques of high society, while deftly exposing the painful tension between personal desires and societal norms. Wharton died in Paris in 1937 at the age of 75, having written 85 short stories, 16 novels, 11 works of nonfiction, and 3 books of poetry.