FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN ranks with Edgar Allan Poe as one of the greatest writers of modern horror to emerge from the nineteenth century. The Wondersmith and Others collects for the first time in a single volume the complete macabre tales, dream stories, and fantasies of the Irish-Born American who, from 1852 until his death from a wound during the Civil War, was the pre-eminent writer of supernatural stories of his time.

In her detailed Introduction to this volume, Jessica Amanda Salmonson discusses the almost mystery-shrouded background of O'Brien's arrival in New York, the friends and acquaintances of his bohemian existence in the city, and the manner in which many of his stories, fantastic and horrific though they are, also satirise the newspaper and magazine industry of the time.

Such well-crafted tales as 'The Wondersmith', 'The Diamond Lens', 'Jubal, the Ringer', 'The Wonderful Adventures of Mr Papplewick', 'The King of Nodland and his Dwarf', and 'The Dragon-Fang Possessed by the Conjuror Piou-Lu' will thrill and chill, and introduce a new generation of readers to the work of this much overlooked author of the macabre.