The Little Blue Flames and Other Uncanny Tales

Gilded Nightmares – Timeless British Library Books

by A.M. Burrage

This title presents 13 mini masterpieces from one of the most undeservedly neglected authors of twentieth century strange fiction. Nick Freeman, specialist in Gothic literature at Loughborough University, has selected the contents based on the author’s best work.

In the midst of this sudden and wild galloping brain-storm I remembered what Ferrers had said about the candlesticks. There was something sinister and uncanny about them. And I knew with a certainty that if I lay and watched I should see something unbearable.

The supernatural tales of A. M. Burrage were recognized by contemporaries such as M. R. James and the critic E. F. Bleiler as some of the most imaginative and cleverly told ghost stories in the English language, and yet today his name haunts the fringes of the genre. Burrage was unafraid to position his ghosts among the trappings of modernity, and his experiments with the genre set him apart from the antiquarian ‘Jamesian’ tradition.

Presenting 13 of the author’s best tales from the 1920s and 30s – including accounts of uncanny living wax figures, unsettling timeslips into troubled pasts and Burrage’s horror masterpiece ‘One Who Saw’ – this collection is another step towards restoring A. M. Burrage’s name to the heights of the best writers of supernatural fiction.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Classics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 2022

About the author

Alfred McLelland Burrage (1889-1956) was a British writer. He was noted in his time as an author of fiction for boys which he published under the pseudonym Frank Lelland, including a popular series called "Tufty". Burrage is now remembered mainly for his horror fiction.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.M. Burrage was a name I knew from anthologies of classic ghost stories, but I'd never been able to acquire a decent selection of his work because most of it was published in periodicals rather than hard covers. With the appearance this volume in the British Library's Tales of the Weird series though, I have 13 helpings of Burrage's no-nonsense storytelling to enjoy. The old faves are here - 'Smee', 'The Sweeper', 'The Waxwork' - but there are also some intriguing lesser-known pieces such as 'The Green Scarf', a timeslip tale which will make me wary of misbehaving next time I visit a National Trust property, 'The Running Tide', which features a haunted Cornish pub, and 'The Acquittal', a story which builds on the too-friendly ghost of Robert Hichens' 'How Love Came to Professor Guildea'. All these tales are told with a minimum of fuss but nonetheless convey a strong sense of atmosphere, and their down-to-earth style makes them a refreshing change from the tweediness of a lot of 'golden age' supernatural fiction. Burrage certainly deserves to be better known as he was an accomplished craftsman who could find menace in the most mundane settings and objects. The cheap brass candlesticks of the title story are far less exotic than the Latin-inscribed whistle in M.R. James depicts, and, for those of us addicted to junk shops, perhaps even more menacing.
Overall, this is a consistently entertaining selection of Burrage's work, attractively packaged and with an intelligent and informative introduction that makes me want to read Burrage's memoir of his army service, 'War is War'. Heartily recommended, as they used to say.

[Alex Sarll]

Like most people nowadays, I first encountered A.M. Burrage through his festive classic Smee, but everything else I've since read from him was quality too, so a whole collection was obviously of interest. Granted, I did think it a little off that the British Library had a whole separate line of fancy hardback spook stories (as opposed to premium editions of the regular Tales of the Weird), but 'Gilded Nightmares' is a good name for it, the cover of this one at least is beautifully done in a way JPGs really don't do justice, and the price isn't as high as on some of the increasingly appalling attempts to turn reading into luxe consumerism. It does, though, feel something of a bitter joke as applied to Burrage, who Nick Freeman's introduction tells us was obliged to abandon university plans in his teens after his father's death, and become the family breadwinner, thereafter churning out uncounted hundreds of stories for magazines without the luxury of thinking much about collections, let alone the gap in income a novel would represent. And when they're bundled together like this, you do notice how his characters tend to be types, and how occasionally elements of the tales don't make a lick of sense, as in For The Local Rag, where the protagonist is a great admirer of Dickens, and especially of festive Dickens, but can't abide ghost stories, which...well, yes. But Burrage always approaches it with such conviction that - at least in these cherry-picked examples - he pulls it off, and more than that, includes some little detail that sticks in the memory; in Local Rag, the simple delight of a Christmas ghost story about a man who doesn't want to write a Christmas ghost story - and that's not the only time that, many years before Wes Craven, he has characters in his stories well aware of the rules by which the genre operates, or at least is supposed to.. Everything here has at least the charming, oddly reassuring chill for which I enjoy vintage spook stories, but, Smee aside, I think the most impressive might be The Recurring Tragedy, which moves past that into the realms of the truly nightmarish, Burrage drawing on his own experiences in the Great War to give us a vainglorious fool of a general and the terrible comeuppance from which he will learn nothing at all.

[Lauren Barnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good collection of Burrage's work! Burrage's stories are creepy and eerie serials, so the joy is not in guessing the end but in getting swept up in the ride. As a result this is a good fire-side ghost story companion.

This may be a rare example of a compilation that works well together and with stories that are of comparable strength and intrigue. Obviously one might like a certain story better than others, but I think on the whole these are all good classic ghost stories and a good example of his remarkable gift for the 'cosy' horror story.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of Ghost stories, that get better as you draw towards the end of the book. Read it snuggled up on a cold winter day with a hot mug of something delicious.

[Jeff McIntosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first published ghost story was in Germany, circa 1810.Ghost stories may serve to frighten, but they have served varied purposes as well...including comedy to morality tales. M.R. James, perhaps the finial authority on the ghostly tales, listed five attributes necessary in an English ghost story....pretense of truth, a pleasing terror, no bloodshed or sex, no explanation, and setting those of the writers and readers own day. (at this juncture....lest anyone think I'm more of a ghost story scholar than I am...I cribbed this from Wikipedia's entry on ghost stories...

Burrage, active beginning in 1906, is perhaps best remembered for his spectral collections Some Ghost Stories (1927) and Someone is the Room (1931) (again, Wikipedia). Perhaps you've stumbled across some of Burrage's oft anthologized tales....."The Waxwork" or "The Sweeper".....to my mind...his masterpiece was "Smee"- the story of a ghost who might have been present at an English Christmas party (originally published 1929)....you might be inspired to listen to an audio version on youtube.....(https://www.youtube.com/results?searc...)

"Blue Flames" consists of 15 of the best from Burrage's output....frankly, I found several of the tales be to "run of the mill" ghost stories....aside from the aforementioned Smee, One Who Saw, and Playmates. Amazon sells something like 12 volumes of Burrage's ghostly tales....they run around $13 bucks each...and the type is so small you'll need a magnifying glass to read them....

For any devotee of the English ghost story....

[Paul Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb collection which deserves to be read widely. The plausibility of the stories and the tension that he builds puts Burrage up amongst the best; One Who Saw is first among equals. The title story by contrast is rather weak. Having read War is War by Burrage a couple of years ago I shall certainly take evry opportunity to read more of his work.

[Rupert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the kind of ghost or horror stories that will make you lose sleep at night, but the pleasant and polite kind with occasional unsettling moments. This is the sort of classic old ghost story writing I feel Robert Aickman grew up on and then filled with his roots of anxiety and neurosis, blooming into a creature all its own.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of spooky tales. Some of them were a bit repetitive but it's a good collection for anyone looking for mild ghost stories.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Perfect for Halloween/fall. Would be great for older kids too

[H. F. Greenwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just “Playmates” because it’s not on Goodreads, 4.25 stars