by Ada Buisson
Ada Buisson (1839–1866) put but one novel before the public during her lifetime, the rest of her work, a second novel and a handful of short stories, being published subsequent to her early death.
The five pieces in the present volume, encompassing the entirety of her short fiction, all originally appeared in Belgravia, the magazine edited by her friend Mary Elizabeth Braddon, to whom the authorship was mistakenly assigned by no less a personality than Montague Summers, the great scholar of Gothic literature.
From the somewhat morbid title story to the classic chiller “The Ghost’s Summons”, The Baron’s Coffin and Other Disquieting Tales offers a brilliant assembly of the shorter productions of a Victorian woman writer of exceptional talent who has been for too long neglected.
About the Author
Ada Buisson (1839–1866) was born in 1839 in Battersea, the daughter of merchant John Francis Buisson and Dorothy Jane Smither. In the 1850s, the family moved to Brighton where her mother died in 1852. She published her novel Put to the Test (1865) with Maxwell which introduced her to Mary Elizabeth Braddon who later published several of her stories in Belgravia. Unfortunately, Buisson died in 1866 in Boulogne-sur-Mer.
