Drolls from Shadowland

In the Cornish mines, a man discovers he can coin his blood into gold, but the price exacted is his own flesh. In another tale, a young man searches for the fabled fields of amaranth, where sorrow cannot grow. These are not gentle fairy tales. J.H. Pearce's Drolls from Shadowland (1893) operates in that liminal Victorian space where whimsy curdles into warning, where enchantment serves as a mirror for human longing and its terrible costs. The stories gathered here follow the poor, the desperate, and the dreamers, miners brooding in darkness, souls trading pieces of themselves for escape, into encounters with witches, ancient entities, and the shadows that haunt desire itself. Pearce writes with the atmospheric density of the Cornish mines he knew intimately, layering humor and sorrow into tales that function as moral parables for an age obsessed with transformation and transcendence. Dark fables for readers who prefer their wonder edged with danger.