Margaret Armour

Margaret Armour was a Scottish poet, translator, and editor whose literary work included versions of major German texts as well as supernatural fiction. The Eerie Book, first published in 1898 by J. Shiells, is an anthology she edited rather than a novel she authored alone. Its selection moves through Gothic tales, legends, and fairy stories, gathering writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, and Hans Christian Andersen into a compact survey of the uncanny. W. B. Macdougall supplied fifteen illustrations, making his stark visual contribution part of the original volume’s atmosphere. Armour also translated The Fall of the Nibelungs from the Nibelungenlied, extending her work of moving established literature between languages and audiences. A modern Bodleian Library edition of The Eerie Book adds an introduction by Kirsty Logan while preserving Armour’s historical curation and Macdougall’s art. Her editorial choices give the collection its shape: varied traditions sit together, but each story approaches fear through a different balance of suggestion, folklore, humor, and shock.