The Black Dog: and Other Stories

Originally published in 1923, A. E. Coppard's The Black Dog is a collection of short stories to savor. Alfred Edgar Coppard (1878 – 1957) was an English writer and poet, noted for his influence on the short story form. A writer of fantastical -- and sometimes disturbing -- stories, he writes with assured literary flare and is a writer's writer.As for his own influences, Coppard listed Sterne, Dickens, James, Hardy, Shaw, Chekhov and Joyce as authors he valued; conversely, he expressed a dislike for the works of D. H. Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence, and Rudyard Kipling. Some of Coppard's collections, such as Adam and Eve and Pinch Me and Fearful Pleasures, contain stories with fantastic elements, either of supernatural horror or allegorical fantasy.Coppard's short stories were praised by Ford Madox Ford and Frank O'Connor. The Times Literary Supplement praised Coppard's "brilliant virtuosity as a pure spinner of tales" Coppard's supernatural fiction was admired by Algernon Blackwood, and Brian Stableford argues that Coppard's fantasy has a similar style to that of Walter de la Mare and that "many of his mercurial and oddly plaintive fantasies are deeply disturbing."