Eight tales.

These eight tales by Walter de la Mare have never been collected, following their initial publication—under the byline of "Walter Ramal” - in The Sketch, Pall Mall Magazine, and The Cornhill Magazine at the turn of the century. They represent de la Mare's early fiction, and their author agreed to their republication in book form only a short time before his death. Their authorship is unmistakable, and such stories as A Mote and A: B: O. clearly indicate de la Mare's strengthening course toward the writing of such remarkable macabre masterpieces as Seaton's Aunt, All Hallows, The Connoisseur, Crewe, and others.

Walter de la Mare was one of that small group of British writers who brought the macabre tale to new heights of artistry. These stories are his earliest published work—Kismet, one of them, was his first story to appear in print when it was brought out by The Sketch in 1895, but their author, though he "had a long way to go before he should be able to produce the literature that the foremost among his writing contemporaries should rejoice to hail so many years afterward" was, as Dr. Wagenknecht writes, "embryonically at least, the writer we were to know and love in so many varied phases of his activity, down through the busy years, in such a large body of work, so varied in its aspects, so extraordinarily single in its inspiration."