Hugh Walpole

All Souls' Night Hugh Walpole

Roman Catholics and other Christians mark All Souls' Day, a day of prayer and rememberance for the faithfully deceased, on November 2. By offering prayers, intercessions, alms, and cemetery visits, people can acquire indulgences for the miserable souls in purgatory. Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) was one of the most popular and prolific English authors of his time, best known for his historical novels and children's novels. But it was in the realm of the macabre and the supernatural that Walpole was at his best, and this collection of sixteen tales contains many of his best, including the classic werewolf tale "Tarnhelm"; the often anthologized 'The Little Ghost'; "La neve", a chilling story of revenge from beyond the grave; and perhaps the highlight of the collection, "The Silver Mask", which one reviewer called "a masterpiece, a classic example of how a tale can be truly terrifying and spooky without ghosts and with the slightest hint of the supernatural."The sixteen stories in Walpole's book all achieve a high level of quality, and they are all differentiated by the distinctive literary excellence that may be expected in his writing.