"The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known creepy stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. He wrote in his treatise "Supernatural Horror in Literature", "Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a single strained passage or a single false note." "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.