The Lock and Key Library

[j. d. worthington]

I don't know how many here have heard of this before, but it was a set edited by Julian Hawthorne (Nathaniel Hawthorne's son), first published in 1909. It consisted of ten volumes of detective, mystery (in both the modern and the broader sense), and horror tales, and covered stories from all around the world and from ancient to modern sources. Though some of these (such as Crime and Punishment) were highly abridged, and others (such as Melmoth the Wanderer) were only excerpts, nonetheless this was an impressive selection of material -- enough so to not only have later reprintings, but to even be issued as an abridged, six-volume set (complete with new title and a shift in contents or two -- as I recall) some time later. Either has their share of afficionadoes, one of whom was, in fact, H. P. Lovecraft, who drew heavily on the Lock and Key Library for source material for his Supernatural Horror in Literature essay.

In this age of electronically-available literature, many (if not all) of these volume are once more available either free or for a minimal charge. I understand there's even a new paperback edition of nine volumes of the set (I don't know whether the tenth is available or not, but it doesn't look like it, which is a shame, as it had some material by, for example, Robert-Houdin, and was on "Real-Life Mysteries and Magic").

At any rate, for those who may be interested in taking a look, here's the TOC for the set (in the case of collections of tales or longer tales where separate titles are given for chapters, I've only given the overall title), along with links to some of the volumes... those I've found so far.

For the reader of older classics in these fields -- enjoy. For the newcomer whose curious -- I hope you find things here to whet your appetite for more.

And now, the main attraction:

Volume I: NORTH EUROPE -- Russian, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian

Alexander Sergeievitch Pushkin: The Queen of Hearts
Vera Jelihovsky: The General's Will
Feodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevskey: Crime and Punishment (abridged)
Anton Chekhoff: The Safety Match
Vsevolod Vladimirovitch Krestovski: Knights of Industry
Jorgen Wilhelm Bergsoe: The Amputated Arms
Otto larssen: The Manuscript
Bernhard Severin Ingemann: The Sealed Room
Steen Steensen Blicher: The Rector of Veilbye

(Hungarian Mystery Stories)

Ference Molnar: The Living Death
Maurus Jokai: Thirteen at Table
Etienne Barsony: The Dancing Bear
Arthur Elck: The Tower Room

Volume II: MEDITERRANEAN -- Italian, Spanish, Oriental, Ancient Latin and Greek
(Part I. -- Italian and Spanish Mystery Stories)

I. M. Palmarini: Shadows
Camillo Boito: The Gray Spot
Giovanni Verga: The Stories of the Castle of Trezza
Antonio Focazzaro: The Imp in the Mirror
Luigi Capuana: The Deposition
Pedro de Alarcón: The Nail
Alfredo Oriani: The Moscow Theater Plot

(Part II. -- Oriental Mystery Stories)

Introduction by Charles Johnston: A Web of World-Old Oriental Tales
The Power of Eloquence (Japanese)
The Dishonest Goldsmith and the Ingenious Painter (Turkish)
The Craft of the Three Sharpers (Arabic)
The Cheerful Workman (Arabic)
The Robber and the Woman (Arabic)
The Wonderful Stone (Chinese)
The Weaver Who Became a Leach (Arabic)
Visākhā (Tibetan)
Told by the Constable (Arabic)
The Unjust Sentence (Chinese)
The Scar on the Throat (Arabic)
Devasmitá (Sanskrit)
The Sharpers and the Money-lender (Arabic)
The Withered Hand (Turkish)
The Melancholist and the Sharper (Arabic)
Lakshadatta and Lahdhadatta (Sanskrit)
The Cunning Crone (Arabic)
Judgment of a Solomon (Chinese)
The Sultan and His Three Sons (Arabic)
Tale of a Demon (Sanskrit)
The Jar of Olives and the Boy Kazi (Arabic)
Another Solomon (Chinese)
Calamity Ahmad and Habsolom Bazazah (Arabic)
A Man-Hating Maiden (Sanskrit)
Told by the Constable (Arabic)
The Clever Thief (Tibetan)
The King Who Made Mats (Persian)
The Brahman Who Lost His Treasure (Sanskrit)
The Duel of the Two Sharpers (Arabic)
The lady and the Kazi (Persian)
Mahaushadha (Tibetan)
Avicenna and the Observant Young Man (Turkish)

(Part III. -- Ancient Latin and Greek Mystery Stories)

Herodotus:

The Thief Versus King Rhampsinitus

The oracle -- Its Test by Croesus

The Oracle -- Its Repulse of the Persians

The Oracle -- Behind the Scenes

Lucius Apuleius: The Adventure of the Three Robbers
Pliny, the Younger: Letter to Sura

Volume III: GERMAN

Friedrich Spielhagen: The Skeleton in the House
Gustav Meyrink: The Man in the Bottle
Dietrich Theden: Christian Lahusen's Baron
Paul Heyse: Andrea Delfin
Wilhelm Hauff: The Singer
Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffman: The Deserted House
Karl Rosner: The Versegy Case
August Groner: The Story in the Notebook
Dietrich Theden: Well-Woven Evidence

Volume IV: CLASSIC FRENCH

Charles Nodier: Ines de Las Sierras

Honoré de Balzac:

An Episode of the Terror

Madame Firmiani

Z. Marcas

Melmoth Reconciled

The Conscript

François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire: Zadig the Babylonian
Alexandre Dumas: D'Artagnan, Detective

Volume V: MODERN FRENCH

Jules Claretie: The Crime of the Boulevard

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant:

The Necklace

The Man with the Pale Eyes

An Uncomfortable Bed

Ghosts

Fear

The Confession

The Horla, or Modern Ghosts

Pierre Mille: The Miracle of Zobéide
Villiers de L'Isle Adam: The Torture by Hope

Erckmann-Chatrian:

The Owl's Ear

The Invisible Eye

The Waters of Death

The Man-Wolf

Volume VI: FRENCH NOVELS

Victor Cherbuliez: Count Kostia
Paul Bourget: André Cornélis

Anonymous:

The Last of the Costellos

Lady Betty's Indiscretion

Volume VII: OLD TIME ENGLISH

Charles Dickens:

The Haunted House

No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal Man

Bulwer-Lytton:

The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain

The Incantation (from A Strange Story)

Thomas De Quincey: The Avenger
Charles Robert Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (excerpts)
Laurence Sterne: A Mystery with a Moral

William Makepeace Thackeray:

On Being Found Out

The Notch on the Ax

Anonymous:

Bourgonef

The Closed Cabinet

Volume VIII: MODERN ENGLISH

Rudyard Kipling:

My Own True Ghost Story

The Sending of Dana Da

In the House of Suddhoo

His Wedded Wife

A. Conan Doyle:

A Case of Identity

A Scandal in Bohemia

The Red-Headed League

Egerton Castle: The Baron's Quarry
Stanley J. Weyman: The Fowl in the Pot
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Pavilion on the Links
Wilkie Collins: The Dream Woman

Anonymous:

The Lost Duchesss

The Minor Canon

The Pipe

The Puzzle

The Great Valdez Sapphire

Volume IX: AMERICAN

Introduction by Julian Hawthorne: "Riddle Stories"
F. Marion Crawford: By the Waters of Paradise
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: The Shadows on the Wall
Melville D. Post: The Corpus Delecti

Ambrose Bierce:

An Heiress from Redhorse

The Man and the Snake

Edgar Allan Poe:

The Oblong Box

The Gold-Bug

Washington Irving:

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams

Adventure of the Black Fisherman

Fitzjames O'Brien:

The Golden Ingot

My Wife's Tempter

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Minister's Black Veil
Anonymous: Horror: A True Tale

Volume X: REAL LIFE

(Part I)

Arthur Train: A Flight into Texas
P. H. Woodward: Adventures in the Secret Service of the Post-Office Department

Andrew Lang:

Saint-Germain the Deathless

The Man in the Iron Mask

(Part II. -- True Stories of Modern Magic)

M. Robert-Houdin: A Conjurer's Confessions
David P. Abbott: Fraudulent Spiritualism Unveiled
Hereward Carrington: More Tricks of "Spiritualism"
Anonymous: How Spirits Materialize

(Part III)

Charles Dickens: Inspector Bucket's Job

The Lock and Key Library - Project Gutenberg

The Lock and Key Library - Project Gutenberg

The Lock and Key Library - Project Gutenberg

The Lock and Key Library - Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg Edition of The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations (Volume IX: American)

The Lock and Key Library - Project Gutenberg

[Nesacat]

Have been slowly working my way through the set you sent me JD, in between reading other books. They are a lovely collection.

Very well put together with some wonderful illustrations that always come as a pleasant surprise because they are few and far between.

And it's always very pleasant to remember, while I am reading them, that Lovecraft also read them and was inspired by them.

[j. d. worthington]

Glad you enjoy them, Cat -- and I rather thought the connection would be an added bonus for you, just as it was for me.

[Nesacat]

JD ... Is definitely an added bonus. I know it's not the exact same set of books but it's close enough for my imagination. Thanks again. And they feel good to hold too.

[Connavar]

Instinctivly this interest me alot. Specially i would love to read mystery,detective,horror stories from different parts of the world.

J.D when you told me about this in the pm i thought you were talking about a collection written by Julian Hawtorne, not edited by

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Connavar

J.D when you told me about this in the pm i thought you were talking about a collection written by Julian Hawtorne, not edited by

Sorry about that... should have been a bit clearer....

Nesa: I know what you mean; it really does have a very neat imaginative connection there which enhances the experience (for me, at any rate); and they are lovely books. Glad I found a set for you....

[GOLLUM]

OK, you can get a nice fascimilie edition of this book. I'm not sure if it's significant enough for me to purchase though? I guess if the old gent drew upon it then it probably is, JD what do you think?

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

OK, you can get a nice fascimilie edition of this book. I'm not sure if it's significant enough for me to purchase though? I guess if the old gent drew upon it then it probably is, JD what do you think?

Well, if you'll look a couple of places, you can also get the original printing for about the same price, or even less (although I don't know about the S&H on such). And it isn't a single book... it's a set of ten volumes; takes up most of a shelf, actually.

As for whether I think it's "significant" enough... For the money, I'd say definitely yes. It's actually rather inexpensive, and has something of a reputation, gathers together not only a great deal of famous material but a fair amount of more obscure material as well, and on the associational level it obviously played an important role in one of the most highly-regarded studies of the supernatural tale written to date.

However, my reason for bringing up the set wasn't to promote buying it (though I think it's a good investment) but to make people aware of it in the first place, and of its current availability either through purchase or through libraries or online, if they wish to look up some classics in any of these fields; classics such as those by Erckmann-Chatrian, which aren't that easy to come by here, for one example. This set brings together an enormous amount of material (it is something on the order of 4000+ pp. in length) that is quite likely to be of interest to afficionadoes of any of these fields....

[GOLLUM]

Yes,the one I saw had it as a single paperback book so either the writing is font size 1 or it's excerpts or only specific volumes they've put together, not sure I'll have to check up on that now....

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Yes,the one I saw had it as a single paperback book so either the writing is font size 1 or it's excerpts or only specific volumes they've put together, not sure I'll have to check up on that now....

Keep in mind that they may be doing it volume by volume, as well -- I've seen such a listing. Look to see if it specifies using any of the volume titles listed above; these are taken from my own set, and were used in the listing I just mentioned, to differentiate between the volumes they were offering....

[GOLLUM]

Will do, thanks....

[ravenus]

This sounds really good, although the problem with such a set is always of having repeats of stories that one already has in more than one collection - Poe and Doyle and a few of the others are already heavily anthologized, and I'll scream if I see another antho with Dicken's Signal Man (fine tale, though it is).

I also have the Panchatantra, which features quite a few of those Sanskrit/Indian stories mentioned there.

[Lobolover]

The Skeleton in the House-sounds like a mystery story.Except the obvious Erckman Chatrian ones,do you know some of theese others which ARE horror?

[j. d. worthington]

In a fair number of cases, yes. However, I simply don't have the time to go through the list and note them. I'd suggest using HPL's essay as a guide (after all, as I noted, he got a fair amount of source material from here), as well as using the links provided....