I expected to find terrifying toadstools, freaky fungi and murderous mushrooms in this book, another in the British Library Tales of the Weird series. It’s not a particularly good collection, although some of the stories are excellent. My first gripe is that this series is supposed to bring us treasures from the archives, not extremely famous stories which most fans of the genre will have read before, or stories which have previously been used in other books in this series. My second gripe is that some of the stories were only tenuously connected to fungi and it made me wonder if there weren’t many stories to choose from. My third gripe is that the editor’s personality got in the way; his writing style was irritating and tried to be cleverly amusing; not only that, but he included a new story written by himself! Although I really liked the concept of this book and it’s ideal for seasonal reading, I was disappointed with the selection of stories.

‘Mushrooms’ by Sylvia Plath. This is a fantastic poem, very famous. It is apparently metaphorical but in the context of this book it really is all about mushrooms.

‘The Voice in the Night’ by William Hope Hodgson. It’s a very atmospheric, chilling tale, but I have read it before in the brilliant collection Evil Roots.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ by Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve read this a few times before and never considered that fungus is a main theme of the story, despite the decayed house. Even if the story is indeed about fungus, I thought its place could have been given to a lesser known author or story.

‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Another super-famous story, often anthologised, it’s brilliant but I’ve read before (studied it, actually) and although the patterns on the wallpaper are described as toadstools, again it’s not exactly the main theme and I’d rather have read something more obscure.

‘The Shunned House’ by H P Lovecraft. I’ve read this one before too, but I don’t think it’s one of his best. The history of the house and its occupants is difficult to follow, but it does get very creepy towards the end. The fungi either work with, or are a symptom of, the evil force buried beneath the house.

‘The Purple Pilaeus’ by H G Wells. It was nice to read a Wells story that was new to me. This one is about a rather downtrodden but morally strict man whose personality changes for the better after eating a purple mushroom. However, it’s one of his comical stories about society and is not exactly weird horror.

‘The Fiddler in the Fairy Ring’ by Julia Horatia Ewing. I liked this story, which had the quality of a fairytale. The mushrooms are not a big part of the tale, and it’s not a particularly weird tale either, but they form the fairy ring which the characters get pulled into.

‘How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery’ by E F Benson. I didn’t enjoy this story, which was a bit gruesome, had a lot of characters and wasn’t much about fungus.

‘The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis’ by Clark Ashton-Smith. Now that’s what I call weird fungal horror. Along with the Hodgson, this one matched most closely with the theme of the book. Set on Mars, an expedition to ancient ruins disturbs a colony of toadstool-creatures which drop on people’s heads, eat their brains and control the bodies.

‘The Great Fog’ by H F Heard. This story had an environmental theme and was cleverly thought-out, but the writing style was dull. It’s about a sort of mildew fog which changes everything.

‘The Stains’ by Robert Aickman. A long story which I didn’t enjoy. Nothing much seemed to happen until the end and perhaps I’m wrong (I fell asleep while trying to get through it) was more lichen than fungus.

‘Cesare Thodol: Some Lines Written on a Wall’ by Mark Samuels. I didn’t quite understand this one at first, but by the end I thought it was very good. It’s about a sentient fungus which controls everyone and partly takes place in a mental hospital.

‘The Mykophagoi’ by Aaron Worth. Written in an exaggeratedly historical style and with obvious influences from other authors in this book, this story is about two stranded men that can’t stop eating mushrooms.

This book was published by the British Library, 2025.