Pears Annual

Pears Annual was published yearly, at Christmas, between the years 1891 and 1926 by A & F Pears, the company that manufactures Pears’ Soap. As with similar Christmas annuals, they were richly illustrated and contained a variety of season-appropriate features and stories.

Pears Annuals contained works of fiction by many famous authors including Charles Dickens and E. F. Benson.

Benson’s story “The Psychical Mallards“, which appeared in Pears Annual for 1921 is included in the Public Domain Texts section of this site. It’s not a horror story, so it’s a poor fit for the site, but the site contains all of E. F. Benson’s other stories; so I felt obliged to include it as well.