The Door Ajar, a collection of seven short stories of the weird and uncanny by Virginia Milward, was first published by William Rider & Son, Limited, in the spring of 1912. Two of the tales are premonitory, and three of them involve haunted objects—a book from the time of plague, a silver box that witnessed the French Revolution, and a painting from fifteenth-century Florence—that reveal the tragic ends of those who once possessed them. The atmosphere in all of the stories is oppressive; the women in them are haunted, desperate, tortured, abandoned or exhausted, and the cause for their sad state is usually a man, for ‘where men go pain follows—pain and misery of mind.’ These are tales in which ‘woman suffers and the man sins, and the man shares all the sin, but not the suffering.’

This Nezu Press edition, the first republication of the collection since 1912, includes a 17-page biographical essay by Gina R. Collia that reveals the real identity of the author and paints a vivid picture of her troubled life: “ ‘I Have No Use for Men’: The Life of Pearl Rudkin.”
 
‘They are striking, and brilliantly written; the occult strain in them gives them an additional piquancy. The last story, “A Minor Third,” which is less obviously occultistic than the rest, ends in a situation which is seldom surpassed for power in short stories.’ ~ Westminster Review, 1912.
 
‘Seven short stories of passion and crime in which the weird and uncanny form a fascinating background to scenes of high dramatic power and throbbing human interest.’ ~ Old Moore’s Monthly Messenger, 1912.
 
Cover image: The Posy by Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942).
 
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