Deadly dolls

Dolls, mannequins, humanoid toys and dummies are the quintessential symbols of the uncanny, referenced by Freud in his foundational essay on the phenomenon of the familiar-turned-unsettling, and remaining a terrifying recurring menace of horror media today. In this collection, Elizabeth Dearnley revives a sinister troupe of uncannily animated figures from tales across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by authors including E.T.A. Hoffmann, Angela Carter, Vernon Lee, Algernon Blackwood and Rosemary Timperley. Terror and nightmares await when the doors of the doll house swing open and its denizens come out to play.