Walter De la Mare

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) was one of the finest English poets and short-story writers of his age, beloved for the haunting poem ‘The Listeners’ and for children’s work like Peacock Pie. For the fantastic he is crucial: his subtle, psychologically acute ghost stories, ‘Seaton’s Aunt’, ‘All Hallows’, ‘Out of the Deep’, were prized by H. P. Lovecraft as the work of ‘a rare master’, and his novels Memoirs of a Midget (a James Tait Black Prize winner) and The Return probe the uncanny with great delicacy.