While historically interesting, the selection of stories here is disappointing: many are dull, and most have little in common with what a modern reader thinks of as the gothic sensibility. Haining's choices are motivated by Montague Summers', and Summers (while influential) was a deeply strange man whose life and literary career seems driven by a need to be contrarian; his ideas about what makes for a good or interesting piece of gothic short fiction does nothing to contest this.