Grim Themes! Some good mild chills appropriate for dark cold nights. But nothing that'll keep anyone awake. Atherton was a prodigious writer during the Gilded Age. Glad to have discovered her! Must give a nod to [a: Patton Oswalt|2824524|Patton Oswalt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1275241247p2/2824524.jpg] for advertising one of her short stories via subscription service, even though many of her works are available for free on Project Gutenberg. I agree with some of the reviews here on Goodreads. Many of these story endings are just kind of stupid. Nonetheless, I am always searching for women writers, huzzah! Short summaries below.

"THE BELL IN THE FOG"
A "great author," reminds me of confirmed bachelor Henry James, finds a creepy child in the woods, adopts her.

"THE STRIDING PLACE"
Another confirmed bachelor misses his best friend and goes searching, somewhere in that nighttime space between dream and reality.

"THE DEAD AND THE COUNTESS"
A newfangled locomotive engine screams through the wild, rural areas of France and disturbs the interred residents.

"THE GREATEST GOOD OF THE GREATEST NUMBER"
A young doctor decides that cruelty and neglect are appropriate treatments for an opium addicted patient.

"MONARCH OF A SMALL SURVEY"
A rich California man owns vast acres, builds mansions and leases them to rich tenants, treats his sister and employees terribly, and no one benefits from his money. Greed begets greed; the poor remain miserable as they age and remain dependent.

"THE TRAGEDY OF A SNOB"
Middle class man gets the impossible idea that money alone will allow him to rub elbows with the wealthy elite of New York City. Impossible. An invisible cage surrounds them; they care about no one.

"CROWNED WITH ONE CREST"
Beautiful widow is mentally torn with memories of a scandalous sensation from years ago, as she plans to remarry . . .

"DEATH AND THE WOMAN"
A woman watches her husband as he is on his deathbed.

"A PROLOGUE (TO AN UNWRITTEN PLAY)"
A wild hurricane in the West Indies is unable to keep James Hamilton away from his beloved Rachael. Slaves are treated horribly.

"TALBOT OF URSULA"
A self-made man, confirmed bachelor named Talbot, falls in love with a Spanish girl Delfina, who marries a Spanish man. Delfina has ten children, gains 100 pounds; her husband and six of her children die, the remaining children get married and have their own children. And at this point the woman is only 39 years old. Married as a teen, I assume, and her children also married as teens and immediately had some babies. Also, the lady luckily regains her beauty thanks to tuberculosis, so Talbot can reclaim his love for at least a brief time.

THE END

This showed up in the Tor Lovecraft Reread a month or so back, and I finally got to reading it. I'm not really sure why it's in the Lovecraft reread, tbh. It's unsettling less for the reincarnation themes and more for the acceptance of an old rich dude claiming someone else's kid

Spoiler

or trying to; she leaves, in the end

, which no one in the story seems to find creepy at all. * shrugs *

Strong start with diminishing returns.

The first, titular story was fantastic, and a favorite that I'll return to in the future (especially around Halloween).

I also enjoyed "Monarch of a Small Survey" and "The Tragedy of a Snob" for the poignant and well-realized unhappiness of their characters.

I should have expected some problematic unpleasantness from the time period, and "Prologue to a Play" is stupid and racist. "Talbot of Ursula," though interesting for its (romanticized? fabricated? racist) portraits of Californios, was generally creepy and had a messed-up fatphobic ending.

Beautifully written short stories, with horror and Gothic notes, many of them including themes of class and class relations.