<p><b>''I will not read it; I should never sleep again'' </b><br><br>A doctor performs an experiment on a young woman that goes horribly wrong, and a series of increasingly strange events follow: sinister woodland rituals, disappearances, suicides... Viewed as immoral and decadent on first publication in 1894, Machen''s weird tale has since established itself as a classic of its genre and has been described by Stephen King as ''one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language''. <br><br><b>The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers'' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.</b></p>