Author Description

Ada Buisson (1839-1866) put but one novel before the public during her lifetime, the rest of her work, a second novel and a handful of short stories, being published subsequent to her early death. The five pieces in the present volume, encompassing the entirety of her short fiction, all originally appeared in Belgravia, the magazine edited by her friend Mary Elizabeth Braddon, to whom the authorship was mistakenly assigned by no less a personality than Montague Summers, the great scholar of Gothic literature. From the somewhat morbid title story to the classic chiller "The Ghost's Summons," The Baron's Coffin and Other Disquieting Tales offers a brilliant assembly of the shorter productions of a Victorian woman writer of exceptional talent who has been for too long neglected.