This is a fascinating and often entertaining collection of Gothic tales from the early 19th century, although fans of modern horror should note that gore is in short supply, on the whole, the emphasis being more on psychological terror (justified or not) and mystery rather than on physical violence.

The book opens with Polidori's The Vampyre, a product of course of the same ghost-telling session at the Villa Diodati in Geneva that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The vampyre, Lord Ruthven, may or may not have been based upon Lord Byron, but he is the forerunner of the stereotypical literary vampire, the glamorous aristocrat tempting the innocent.

Other tales, by a variety of authors, deal with matters that would have resonated very strongly with their original audience, such as The Victim, in which medical students buy corpses that have been 'burked', i.e. suffocated (in 1829 Burke and Hare were brought to trial, charged with murdering sixteen people). Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman concerns a secret criminal brotherhood of Irish nationalists. The meeting at which they discuss the atrocities to come is reminiscent of a Black Mass, and even a modern reader could hardly fail to be moved by the senselessness and horror of the resultant violence.

Premature burial and 'living death' also feature in the stories, and the theme of 'the sins of the fathers', exploited most notably in the excellent but disturbing Gothic tale, The Red Man. There are nods towards Frankenstein in Life in Death, although it's a chilling tale in its own right, taking on the theme of man's attempts to outwit nature and mortality (or God, depending on your beliefs).

Not all of the stories are successful, but the book is well worth reading if Gothic fiction is your thing.