"Blackwood revealed that all of his stories were based on personal experiences or those of his close friends. This from the man whose stories take us to a lonely island in the river Danube where two travellers face the cosmic powers of the Earth in all their might; and deep into the deserts of Egypt where a lone man witnesses the spirit of the ancient past rise up like a gigantic wall of sand. H. P. Lovecraft said of him, 'Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood's genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences ...'".