Algernon Blackwood
Wendigo

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) is undoubtedly one of the masters of classic weird. His work, imbued with an authentic and alien spiritual terror, is of great caliber and deserves wider dissemination beyond the narrow circle of weird tale and unknown enthusiasts.
A native of Kent, he later moved to Canada and the United States to pursue journalism and commerce. Fortunately, upon his return to England, he decided to devote himself to horror storytelling.

His figure has been properly celebrated in important studies on horror fiction: H.P. Lovecraft, in his now classic Supernatural Horror in Literature, speaks of him in extremely flattering terms and goes so far as to declare The Willows as the best story in the history of supernatural literature, while also citing The Wendigo as another pinnacle of his writing.

Even more space will be dedicated to him by Peter Penzoldt in his unfortunately unpublished in Italy The Supernatural In Fiction (with the exception of a chapter on Machen translated by Claudio De Nardi in the Fanucci edition of The Three Impostors by the Welsh author).
In fact, the final chapter of this important study delves deeply into Blackwood's work, and the book itself is dedicated to him with great admiration.
It should be noted, as Penzoldt himself reports, that Blackwood was very familiar with Lovecraft's work but was not very enthusiastic about it, as in his view, the writings of the recluse of Providence lacked the qualities of genuine "spiritual terror" that characterized his own work. In hindsight, one can say that today H.P. Lovecraft's work is much more known than that of Blackwood, without taking anything away from his figure.
Already Fruttero and Lucentini, in the introduction to the historic and pioneering Italian anthology Ghost Stories, found his stories "hopelessly aged." This is, in my opinion, an ungenerous judgment: over time, some of his best works have not lost any of their genuine "spiritual terror."

A fitting example of his particular attitude is indeed the already mentioned story The Wendigo which is now reintroduced by Adiaphora with English text alongside. It is, ultimately, a small atmospheric gem where great importance is given, as in other "Blackwoodian" stories, to the "panic terror" symbolized by a wild and indifferent nature towards man.
This theme can be found in the already mentioned masterpiece story "The Willows," where two unwary travelers, lost on a hostile and desolate Danubian island, are forced to face terrifying manifestations of hostile and incomprehensible alien entities. The dark and chilling threat of these presences from a cosmic elsewhere seems to be foreign and indifferent to common anthropocentric conceptions.

The new Adiaphora edition of The Wendigo is of certain interest, especially considering that it is a very important story and now hard to find. It was, in fact, found in an old anthology by Theoria Editions – The Wendigo and Other Fantastic Tales – now almost untraceable except at astronomical prices on the collectors’ market. The graphic design, however, is not very satisfactory in my opinion.
Algernon Blackwood is also remembered today for being one of the pioneers in giving life to the famous figure of the "occult detective." In this sense, the character of John Silence from his pen is one of the most effective of this genre and stands alongside the various Carnacki by W.H. Hodgson, Jules De Grandin by Seabury Queen, and Harry Dickson by Jean Ray.
Among the various stories of this cycle, Ancient Sorceries, set in an ancient French village where the inhabitants turn into felines, is unforgettable. This story later inspired Jacques Tourneur for his famous Cat People. Also noteworthy is Secret Worship, set in a German school, which takes advantage of a hypnotic diabolic atmosphere with continuous references to ancient satanic cults that were practiced there in ancient times but seem to have not yet lost their influence.
Blackwood was a member of the Golden Dawn like many other writers of the time including Arthur Machen and was always interested, as he declared, in the hidden powers and faculties within the human being.
Today, unfortunately, excluding the studies of eminent scholars of the fantastic like S.T. Joshi, he does not seem to enjoy the fame he deserves, a common destiny for many buried writers of the fantastic.
This Adiaphora edition includes an introduction by Matteo Zapparelli Olivetti and an afterword by H.P. Lovecraft taken from Supernatural Horror In Literature.