The Villa and The Vortex

Elinor Mordaunt was the pen name of Evelyn May Clowes (1872-1942), a prolific and popular novelist and short story writer, working in Australia and Britain in the first thirty-five years of the twentieth century. Melissa Edmundson has curated this selection of the best of Mordaunt's supernatural short fiction, which blend the technologies and social attitudes of modernity with the classic supernatural tropes of the ghost, the haunted house, possession, conjuration from the dead and witchcraft. Each story is an original and compelling contribution to the genre, making this selection a marvellous new showcase for women's writing in classic supernatural fiction. Stories include: The Villa', in which a Croatian mansion does things to its unlucky owners. 'The Country-side', in which a very ordinary infidelity demands the ultimate sacrifice. 'Hodge' (previously published in Women's Weird) in which a teenage brother and sister resurrect a prehistoric man and bring him into their home. 'Four wallpapers', in which stripping off the wall coverings of a French chateau re-enacts a family tragedy.