February Books 3) Irish Tales of Terror, edited by Peter Haining
This anthology should not be confused with a quite different book with exactly the same title, but edited by Jim McGarry, which I read and didn't much care for just over a year ago. I did like this one. Haining has constructed it as an introduction to fantastic literature for readers interested in Ireland, rather than desperately grabbing anything vaguely genre and Hibernian; this does mean that some entries don't strictly fit the remit - "The Canterville Ghost", by Oscar Wilde, has no Irish connection apart from its author, and the final piece by Ray Bradbury (who also supplies an introduction to the volume as a whole) has no fantasy content. But it's an eclectic and interesting anthology, with pieces from Giraldus Cambrensis and James Joyce (the passage about Hell from Portrait) as well as the more obvious Maturin, Hodgson, Lovecraft, Le Fanu, Yeats, Dunsany, Sinead de Valera, etc. Worth getting hold of.