If the Dead Knew

This volume contains the weird stories of May Sinclair (1863–1946), a British writer whose many novels and tales established her as a leading figure in English literature in her time. Her two collections of weird tales, Uncanny Stories (1923) and The Intercessor and Other Stories (1931), contain a number of works that feature her central literary concerns: an emphasis on interpersonal relationships and an intense focus on the shifting psychological states of her characters. Sinclair utilized such central weird motifs as the ghost, the revenant, and psychic transference to underscore her keen insight into human frailty. The Classics of Gothic Horror series seeks to reprint novels and stories from the leading writers of weird fiction over the past two centuries or more. Ever since the Gothic novels of the late 18th century, weird fiction has been a slender but provocative contribution to weird fiction. Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, the Victorian ghost story writers, the "titans" of the early twentieth century (Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft), the Weird Tales writers, and many others contributed to the development and enrichment of weird fiction as a literary genre, and their work deserves to be enshrined in comprehensive, textually accurate editions.