The Man-Wolf and Other Tales (Expanded Edition)

The Wildside Press edition includes the complete 1876 text of the collection “The Man-Wolf and Other Tales” and adds four additional stories: “The Invisible Eye,” “The Murderer’s Violin,” “The Spider of Guyana,” and “The White and Black.” Emile Erckmann (1822-99) and Louis Alexandre Chatrian (1826-90) began their writing partnership in the 1840s, and continued working together-producing plays, novels, and short stories-until the year before Chatrian’s death. At the height of their powers they were known as ‘the twins’, and their works proved popular in England, where they began appearing (in translation) as early as 1865. After their deaths, however, they slipped into obscurity; and apart from the odd tale reprinted in anthologies, and the ill-fated collection of their weird tales published by Millington in 1981, their work has remained difficult to find.

“The collaborators Erckmann-Chatrian enriched French literature with many spectral fancies like The Man-Wolf, in which a transmitted curse works toward its end in a traditional Gothic-castle setting.” —H.P. Lovecraft “I should feel myself ungrateful if I did not pay a tribute to the supernatural tales of Erckmann-Chatrian. The blend of French with German in them, comparable to the French-Irish blend in Le Fanu, has produced some quite first-rate romances of this kind.” — M. R. James