I think “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood and “When I Was Miss Dow” by Sonya Dorman have no peer. One’s regarded as supernatural horror and the other as sci fi, but they transcend category and it seems to me insulting to label them as speculative fiction.
To write like this—well, I already conceded the fight.
There are others, titans to me once, whose stories sometimes made me cry and always made me feel that I’d never come as close as rubbing up against their ankles—I ain’t got no more modesty about the thought of ever overtopping them in quality now, though I’ll never achieve their output.
But I’ll talk about them later.
Here are the links to “The Willows” and “When I Was Miss Dow” if you’ve never read these stories before.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood