Weird Tales of Creepy Crawlies - A Fine Selection of Fantastical Short Stories of Mysterious Insects and Spiders (Cryptofiction Classics)

These early works by various authors were originally published in the late 19th century and early 20th century and we are now republishing them with a brand new introduction as part of our Cryptofiction Classics series. 'Weird Tales of Creepy Crawlies' contains a collection of short stories about mysterious insects and arachnids, and includes 'The Strong Spider' by Edgar Allan Poe (1846), 'The Messenger' by Robert W. Chambers (1897), 'The Empire of the Ants' by by H. G. Wells (1905), and many more. The stories in this collection were mostly written around the turn of the century. And most of them reflect what has been a pretty consistent human reaction to insects, as evidenced throughout the literary tradition - fascination and disgust, in equal measure. Despite the Romantics' best efforts, the perception of insects as repulsive, threatening and unclean - the carriers of pestilence and plague in the bible; the exemplifiers of foulness in Shakespeare - has never quite gone away.