In the Library
The Monkey's Paw
W.W. Jacobs, 1902
- Form
- Form Short Story
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Accessible
- Reading time
- Reading time 15 minutes
- Chapters
- Chapters 1
- Length
- Length 4k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
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Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart does the same thing, but builds its dread out of a sound the narrator alone can hear, and cannot stop hearing.
£1.99
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher does the same thing, but shuts its family inside an inheritance no wish could undo.
£1.99
About the book
Rain on the road outside Laburnam Villa, the blinds drawn, a fire lit, a father and son bent over a chessboard while the mother knits: it is the warmest room in English horror, and Jacobs builds it that way on purpose, because everything to come will be let in through its door. A soldier back from India brings a small dried thing, a monkey's paw with three wishes in it, put under a spell by a holy man who wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. The Whites ask for two hundred pounds. The money arrives, and it is compensation: their son has died in the machinery at the works. A week after the funeral, his mother, wild with grief, remembers that two wishes are left. Nothing frightens like a wish granted. The dread here is not what stands in the road; it is the mother at the bolts in the dark, and the father on his knees, feeling for the paw.