Stories from a Lost Anthology

Stories From a Lost Anthology is the third collection of tales by Rhys Hughes, an acknowledged master of the strange story, published by Tartarus Press. As in his earlier collections, Worming the Harpy (1995) and The Smell of Telescopes (2000), Hughes’s plotting and puns are frequently outrageous, but somehow, through a strong but warped internal logic, all is made probable, even believable.Many of the tales in Stories From A Lost Anthology are set in the author’s native Wales, although they may not describe that country as the official guidebooks would have it. Have you ever wondered what happens in the rooms above a Welsh public house? Or to a vampire when it’s polarity is reversed? And how exactly would you kidnap Dylan Thomas, a half-century after his death? As Michael Moorcock says, Hughes is a:" … daffy Dunsany, full of knowing favours, canny to the calls of a thousand rarees, this modern original is as eccentric as the great eighteenth-century mavericks he sometimes resembles. Few living fictioneers approach this chef's sardonic confections, certainly not in English. Perhaps Calvino comes to mind and The Misfortunes of Elphin offers a few echoes, to mention Meredith's father-in-law again. For me Shagpat and Farina itch at his references, but I suspect he's unfamiliar with Meredith in that droll, un-moral mode. If he's unfamiliar with any work of fiction at all, of course. He has clearly at some point swallowed a library."