Love it or loathe it, Halloween approaches. One of the undoubted benefits of the season for the bibliophile is the sudden promotion of books on supernatural subjects. James Cummins in New York has made
an online catalogue from appropriate items in their stock and it makes a lovely eclectic mix. There are all manner of goodies here from an autograph letter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in which he quotes a stanza from his "Haunted Houses" and a first edition of M. R. James's
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary to a couple of 1920s tomes on Vampirism and the wonderful original, if unfinished, Rackham illustration above of a witch and her broom from
The Ingoldsby Legends. There's something very satisfying about the breadth and interest provided by even such a short list.
