The Dweller on the Threshold: Annotated by S. T. Joshi

Robert Hichens (1864-1950) was a popular British novelist of the turn of the twentieth century. Early in his career he exhibited considerable interest in the weird, producing the poignant ghost story "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" (1900) and numerous other tales of horror and the supernatural. In 1911 he published the short novel The Dweller on the Threshold, an exhaustive treatment of psychic possession. The story outlines how the weak-willed curate Henry Chichester is psychically dominated by the Rev. Marcus Harding, the rector of a fashionable London parish. Harding wants to "communicate with the spirit world" and ultimately to take over Chichester, body and soul. It is unclear whether H. P. Lovecraft ever read this work, but it bears striking similarities to his own tales of psychic possession, ranging from "The Thing on the Doorstep" to "The Shadow out of Time." But The Dweller on the Threshold is worth reading in its own right, as an exemplary tale of weird fiction whose polished and elegant prose is no barrier to the conveyance of terror and strangeness.