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Today's show features the first of a two part reading of The Willows by Algernon Blackwood.  First published in 1907, The Willows has the distinction of being considered by H.P. Lovecraft as the finest supernatural tale in English literature. We'll hear the first half of the story today, and finish up on the next episode.

Special thanks to FNH from the Cthulhu Podcast for offering this reading for us to enjoy.  Stop by his site and poke around, if you like what you hear here, he's got plenty more of it!

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On this episode of Vintage Horror Radio we'll hear a radio adaptation of a film instead of the usual classic short story.  Based on Dorothy MacArdle's 1942 novel Uneasy Freehold, The Uninvited hit the big screen in 1944.  We'll hear the Screen Directors Playhouse version that originally aired November 18, 1949.

Théophile Gautier was born France in 1811. He gained much acclaim as a critic, journalist and novelist, as well as producing several poems and plays. He is probably best remembered for his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), whose preface about art for art’s sake became a sort of credo in the nineteenth century. In his later years, Gautier was offered a sinecure as Princess Mathilde Bonaparte’s librarian. She was the cousin of Napoleon II. Alongside his other work he also wrote a number of great supernatural stories, some of which we’ll look at here.

This has been a very hectic month and I am behind on having an article to post for this month. I still hope to keep my streak of at least one article a month going, so I'm going to try and post something before August end.

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On this episode of Vintage Horror Radio, we’ll hear the radio adaptation of Algeron Blackwood’s story Keeping His Promise. The original short story was first published in 1906, and included in the collection The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories. This radio version was produced for the series Haunted.

Manly Wade Wellman was born in Portuguese West Africa in 1903, but eventually settled in North Carolina, America. He started out as a reporter before quitting to become a full time writer. He wrote in multiple genres’ including horror, science fiction, adventure, crime, comic books, and mainstream novels. Wellman won the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award in 1946, beating out fellow contender William Faulkner. Faulkner took offense to the slight, writing the magazine’s editor, calling himself the most important American writer in Europe. Wellman would win several other awards during his long and prolific career, including the World Fantasy Award twice.

Edith Wharton (originally Edith Jones) was born in 1872 in New York City, New York to an upper class family. Her long marriage to Edward Wharton was an unhappy one that ended in divorce in1913. She enjoyed much mainstream success as a writer, publishing The House of Mirth in 1902, Ethan Frome in 1911, and became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1920 for her novel The Age of Innocence. She was good friends with many luminaries of the times, most notably being writer Henry James.