Whimsical Tales

Jean Printemps

Translated by Shawn Garrett

“The plain was covered by a multitude of skeletons moving about in the most extreme confusion. It was a jumble of shins, femurs, ribs, skulls, coming or going in all directions and moving with unparalleled vivacity. From the high place where I stood all these skeletons largely resembled an immense field of rapeseed whose whitened stems, shaken by the wind, crisscrossed each other in all directions.”

“Contes fantaisistes,” originally published in 1885, and here translated for the first time into English by Shawn Garrett as Whimsical Tales, is the only known book by the mysterious author Jean Printemps.

In this collection of fanciful stories, a large number of which might be said to fall into the category of “droll horror,” the reader is treated to phantom hunts and freaks, bizarre happenings and risky bets, in a hearty buffet of both dreams and nightmares. Many of the entries, such as “The Battle of the Dead,” which concerns a combat among skeletons, feature military situations, which might lend a clue as to the author’ s background.

With its interweaving of humor and dread, legend and anecdote, depths and shallows, Whimsical Tales is an essential edition to any serious library of the fantastic.

About the Author
Jean Printemps, contributed articles and stories the journal La Lanterne, but aside from that, very little is known about him, though the likelihood that his background was military seems plausible, judging by the contents of his single collection of short stories, Contes fantaisistes (1885), much, if not all, of the stories therein originally having appeared in La Lanterne.

About the Translator
Shawn Garrett is a freelance editor, critic and short fiction aficionado. He currently co-edits the horror fiction podcast Pseudopod and posts weekly columns with Rue Morgue. His translations include Robert Scheffer’ s Prince Narcissus and Other Stories (Snuggly Books, 2019),  Gabriel Mourey’ s Monada (Snuggly Books, 2021), Armand Charpentier’ s Claustrophobic Madness and Other Tales of Love and Death (Snuggly Books, 2023),  Gustave Geffroy’ s Decadent Tapestries (Snuggly Books, 2023)

Paperback, 200 pages. Release date: April 19, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-094-4
Price: US$16.50