Five Classic Horror Stories - Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Were-wolf, Dracula, & The Phantom of the Opera

Various

Description

Five Classic Horror Stories is a collection of the most chilling and influential horror stories ever written, including tales by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson.

These five ghastly tales are sure to make your hair stand on end. Read Victor Frankenstein’s story as the young scientist pillages graveyards for body parts to fulfil his macabre desire to create life. Discover Dr Jekyll’s wicked monster, Mr Hyde, who evolves from a horrific experiment destroying the balance between good and evil. Meet a strange young woman who appears to be unafraid of anything. Reveal quietly monstrous incidents and curious circumstances in Transylvania. Immerse yourself in a Parisian opera house where a malevolent phantom haunts the stage.

The contents of this volume include:

- Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson

- The Were-Wolf (1896) by Clemence Housman

- Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

- The Phantom of the Opera (1909) by Gaston Leroux

Featuring psychological thrillers, supernatural interventions, and classic gothic horror, this volume is a gripping read and highly recommended for lovers of horror fiction but not for the faint of heart. Fantasy and Horror Classics is proud to be publishing this fantastic collection.

- Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson

- The Were-Wolf (1896) by Clemence Housman

- Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

- The Phantom of the Opera (1909) by Gaston Leroux

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Horror
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 19 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781473347274
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

FIV E CLASSIC HORRO R STORIES
Frankenstein,
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde,
The Were-Wolf, Dracula, &
The Phantom of the Opera
Fantasy and Horror Classics







Copyright © 2021 Fantasy and Horror Classics
This edition is published by Fantasy and Horror Classics, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
FRANKENSTEIN
Ma ry Shelley
LETTER 1
LETTER 2
LETTER 3
LETTER 4
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
C HAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
C HAPTER VII
CH APTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
C HAPTER XII
CH APTER XIII
C HAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
C HAPTER XVI
CH APTER XVII
CHA PTER XVIII
C HAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
C HAPTER XXI
CH APTER XXII
CHA PTER XXIII
CH APTER XXIV
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE
Robert Louis Stevenson
STORY O F THE DOOR
SEARCH FO R MR. HYDE
DR. JEKYLL WAS QUI TE AT EASE
THE CAREW M URDER CASE
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON
INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW
THE LAST NIGHT
DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE
HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT O F THE CASE
THE WERE-WOLF
Clemen ce Housman
THE WERE-WOLF
DRACULA
B ram Stoker
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
C HAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
C HAPTER VII
CH APTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
C HAPTER XII
CH APTER XIII
C HAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
C HAPTER XVI
CH APTER XVII
CHA PTER XVIII
C HAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
C HAPTER XXI
CH APTER XXII
CHA PTER XXIII
CH APTER XXIV
C HAPTER XXV
CH APTER XXVI
CHA PTER XXVII
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Gas ton Leroux
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
C HAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
C HAPTER VII
CH APTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
C HAPTER XII
CH APTER XIII
C HAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
C HAPTER XVI
CH APTER XVII
CHA PTER XVIII
C HAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
C HAPTER XXI
CH APTER XXII
CHA PTER XXIII
CH APTER XXIV
C HAPTER XXV
CH APTER XXVI
EPILOGUE
THE PARIS O PERA HOUSE


FR ANKENSTEIN
OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS
By Mary Wollstonecra ft Shelley
First Published in 1818


Ma ry Shelley
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) was born in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She came from rich literary heritage; her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1812, when she was just fifteen, Mary met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley was married at the time, but the two spent the summer of 1814 travelling around Europe together. In 1815, Mary gave birth prematurely to a girl, and the infant died twelve days later. In her journal of March 19, 1815, Mary recorded a nightmare she'd had, now cited as a possible inspiration for her future masterwork, Frankenstein : “Dream that my little baby came to life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & i t lived.”
In the summer of 1816, the couple famously visited the poet Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva, in Switzerland. Storms and tumultuous weather (common in Shelley's future novel) confined them to the indoors, where they and Byron's assorted other guests took to reading to each other from a book of ghost stories. One evening, Byron challenged all his guests to write one themselves. The guests obliged, and Mary's story went on to become Frankenstein . Mary and Percy married later that year, and eighteen months later, in 1818 Frankenstein was published. Mary was only 21, and the novel was a huge success. The first edition of the book included a preface from Percy, and many, disbelieving that a young woman could have penned such a horror story, thought that the nove l was his.
In 1819, following the death of another child, Mary suffered a nervous breakdown. This was compounded three years later when her husband drowned. Widowed at just 25, Mary returned to England, determined to continue profiting from her writing in order to support her one surviving son. Between 1827 and 1840, she was busy as an author and editor, penning three more novels and a number of short stories. However, she never experienced further success of the sort that Frankenstein had brought. Her final decade was blighted by illness, and throughout the 1840s she suffered from terrible headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body. In 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brai n tumour.
Shelley underwent a period of critical neglect after her death, due in part to the onset of the realist movement. For a long time she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and it was not until 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing, including her short fiction, has stimulated a new recognition of its value, and scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major figure in Rom anticism.


LETTER 1
To Mrs. Saville, England.
St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my un dertaking.
I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking suc h as mine.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good Uncle Thomas’ library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafa ring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their ear lier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great