Algernon Blackwood Review: The Goblin’s Collection

After a series of dated humor pieces, Blackwood’s Ten-Minute Stories returned to the supernatural with “The Goblin’s Collection.”

In the story, a traveler lodged in a strange room, allegedly haunted by a mischievous goblin that loved to borrow shiny objects. The traveler was advised not to make a fuss about it and any missing item would be returned. This worked out several times but he, like a character in a fairy tale, couldn’t resist taking a forbidden look and interfering. Would his life be snatched away forever for his indiscretion? Or only a shiny pencil sharpener?

After so many stories with no supernatural elements, I expected the goblin to turn out to be a magpie or pack rat. As a kid, I read several dull stories where the thieving ghost was revealed to be just that.

To my humiliating edification, as I searched for a link about magpies, I discovered that they DO NOT typically steal shiny things (in full disclosure, I have never seen a wild magpie, but a whole slew of other websites agree).

Pack rats apparently steal anything, shiny or not. All those stories in my childhood weren’t just boring–they were lies.

Back to topic, “The Goblin’s Collection” feels like a sanitized fairy tale. The setup sounds like a modern equivalent of the beginning of a Grimms’ work but the ending is relatively mild. It wasn’t inappropriate for the tone of the rest of the story but old fairy tales were usually gruesome with eyes gouged out and heads chopped off. Blackwood Disneyified fairy tales years before Disney.

“The Goblin’s Collection” isn’t on par with Blackwood’s top work but it holds up better than his humor pieces.