This new short story collection, Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love, is part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. These books have been around for a few years now but I’ve let them pass me by as I’ve had enough to read with their Crime Classics series! I’m glad I’ve finally found time to try one as although this collection is a bit uneven I did find it entertaining.

The book contains twelve stories by different authors and includes an introduction by the editor, Joanne Ella Parsons. The stories were originally published between 1833 and 2022 and appear here in chronological order. All have a ‘doomed romance’ theme, with some being much darker than others. There are two that I’ve actually read before – one of them is Sheridan Le Fanu’s lesbian vampire novella, Carmilla, and the other is Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love, also a vampire story, first published in The Bloody Chamber. I didn’t read Carmilla again as I just read it fairly recently, but I did re-read the Carter and was impressed again by the beautiful imagery and the atmospheric Gothic setting she creates.

The oldest story in the book is Mary Shelley’s The Invisible Girl, in which the narrator, out walking along the coast of Wales, finds a painting of a beautiful woman hanging on the wall inside a ruined tower. It was good to have the opportunity to try more of Shelley’s work, having only read Frankenstein so far, but I didn’t find this a particularly strong story. Two that I did enjoy were The Little Woman in Black by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and One Remained Behind by Marjorie Bowen. These are also authors I’ve read before; Braddon is a favourite Victorian author of mine and has a very readable writing style. Her story seemed as if it was heading in one direction, but then surprised me with an ending I wasn’t expecting at all! Bowen was a very prolific author of historical novels and supernatural tales – the story in this collection is a ghost story from 1936 and one of the highlights of the book for me.

Joanne Ella Parsons has clearly tried to include stories with a wide range of geographical settings, exploring different cultures, rather than just sticking with more traditional Gothic stories. Wilkie Collins, another Victorian author I usually enjoy, is represented here with Mr Captain and the Nymph, in which a ship’s captain lost on an unidentified Pacific island falls in love with the daughter of a local priest. It’s an interesting story, although not a good example of his best work. Alice Perrin’s The Tiger-Charm is set on safari in India, while Nalo Hopkinson’s The Glass Bottle Trick transposes the famous Bluebeard folktale to a Caribbean setting. The latter are two new authors for me and I found both stories entertaining, but I’m not sure if I would search out more of their work based on these.

Another highlight was Could You Wear My Eyes? by Kalamu ya Salaam, where a man whose wife has died agrees to have her eyes inserted into his face after her death, allowing him to see life from her perspective. It’s a strange story but a fascinating one! The collection is completed with another 19th century story, Ella D’Arcy’s White Magic, and two contemporary ones, I’ll Be Your Mirror by Tracy Fahey and Dancehall Devil by V. Castro.

Doomed Romances is a real mixed bag, then – there are some very strong stories and some much weaker ones, and including Carmilla seemed an odd decision to me, as it’s so much longer than any of the other stories and made the book feel unbalanced. I enjoyed the collection overall, though, and will probably consider reading more of them.

British Library Publishing publish a range of fiction and non-fiction including the Tales of the Weird, Crime Classics and Women Writers series. They are an independent publisher, so I’m counting this book towards #ReadIndies month, hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life.