The present volume is one of a set of three collections assembling a substantial fraction of the short fantastic fiction of Catulle Mend s (1841-1909).
It assembles 23 tales of the fantastique dealing with anomalous events and altered states of consciousness that might or might not have supernatural causes.
Other writers such as Marcel Schwob have written stories of the same kind, but Mend s' work in that vein is particularly interesting, not merely by virtue of its profusion .