Presented here, with meticulous care and rare prudence, are the unsettling papers from the lost repository of the mysterious and reclusive author vaguely remembered as Richmond Reed. . . The stories he wrote were uncanny, yet, in ways they were tales simplistic and without garish. Reed wrote stories that depicted the life and fate of the forgotten ones, those who were cast into unmarked graves, or left to fodder and waste beside the crusty bank of some foliage covered path. Reed authored stories about good people bidding life on hard times. These stories, left behind in his wake, may have not reached beyond the dust where they were subsequently discovered, if it were not by chance and circumstance. Let us be grateful for the magic of chance. Let us marvel at the science of circumstance. Perhaps, through the publication of this volume of papers and illustrious stories, there may arise a new-found interest to examine, or better yet reveal, more detail concerning just who this obscure and intriguing writer was. Hopefully, "The Lost Stories of Richmond Reed" may well be the beginning.