A mystical battle between foreign gods and local saints is unleashed as idols are mistaken for garden ornaments; an ambiguous wizard spies on his neighbours from an invisible tower; a cursed duelling pistol influences its owners to commit suicide.

With strange combinations of occultism, electricity, magic and playfully Biblical archetypes, the fifteen darkly funny stories in this book illuminate a side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked.

Edited and introduced by Jack Fennell, this collection of lesser-known works of classic Irish fantasy includes stories by Moira O'Neill, Dora Sigerson Shorter, Charles Stuart Villiers, Charlotte McManus and George Egerton.



Jack Fennell is a writer, editor, translator and researcher whose academic publications include pieces on science fiction, utopian and dystopian literature, and the legal philosophy of comic books. He is the author of Irish Science Fiction, a contributing translator for The Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien, editor of A Brilliant Void, and a former Visiting Fellow at the Moore Institute in NUI Galway. He lives in Limerick.