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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 18, 2009 22:16:53 GMT
Michel Parry (ed) - Reign Of Terror: The 2nd Corgi Book Of Victorian Horror Stories (Corgi, 1977)Wilkie Collins - The Dream Woman Charles Collins - The Compensation House Lord Lytton - The House And The Brain Hain Friswell - The Dead Man’s Story John Berwick Harwood - Horror: A True Tale Mary Elizabeth Braddon - The Cold Embrace H. G. Bell - The Merchant Of Rotterdam Erckmann-Chatrian - The Child Stealer Hooray! I've found a copy of this, so even though I don't seem to be able to cut and paste an image of the cover here's the contents on a new thread so I can post my thoughts shortly
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Post by dem bones on Mar 18, 2009 22:52:45 GMT
You might not be able to ..... but i can.  Reckon you're in for a treat with this one, your Lordship. A nice mix of frightfully proper Victorian classics that veers off into inspired lunacy and/ or extreme horridness on at least two occasions. To say any more would only be a whopping great spoiler and I used up my month's quota in one go on Domain! Hope you enjoy it. Even the Bride reckons it's tops. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 20, 2009 9:18:08 GMT
Wilkie Collins - The Dream Woman : Unlike Volume One of this series, which kicked off with the lurid Wheatleyesque Ingoldsby manuscript, we get started here with something far more proper and Victorian, which sadly means there's a litle bit of implication, but in the end not an awful lot happens. Down on his luck Isaac Scatchard has a vision of a woman coming into his bedroom and trying to stab him to death. Years later he meets the woman and despite the protestations of his mother he marries her. The woman becomes a drunk and general ne'er do well and Isaac leaves her, haunted forever by the idea that one day she will try and kill him. And that's about it.
Charles Collins - The Compensation House. Wilkie's younger brother Charlie is up next with a story just as insubstantial. Oswald Strange is terrified of mirrors and with good reason - every time he looks in one he sees the face of the man he murdered because he was his wife's lover. As to where said wife went (we're told he loves her and she's still alive and that's all) nothing more is revealed, leaving Mr Strange to die in bed. The End.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 20, 2009 17:16:24 GMT
Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The House and the Brain: Wow - I wasn't expecting this after those two decidedly ordinary openers! Also known as The Haunters & The Haunted and kicking off the 'supernatural' part of Wagner & Wise's seminal 'Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural' this is one of the wildest stories I have read in ages. It's all the more effective because the first twenty or so pages come across as a standard haunted house tale, so you really aren't expecting what happens when the central character descends into the old hidden room through the concealed trapdoor, nor for the coda which launches itself into some heavy Victorian-style theorising about the nature of hauntings, of the power of thought, and the nature of the immortality of man. Mind blowing, and it does what every really good story should - makes you want to take a break and think about it before reading the next one.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 20, 2009 19:58:03 GMT
James Hain Friswell - The Dead Man's Story. Well it's certainly that. Quite how our title character ends up dead isn't terribly clear, nor is the presumed terrible secret the girl he is enamoured with is harbouring. However this story does give the devil a very nice role and he emerges from it as the most erudite and witty of the featured characters. But this is very ordinary compared to the previous story.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 20, 2009 23:01:58 GMT
The House And The Brain is brilliant. You have to be a bit careful because it sometimes appears in abbreviated form as The Haunted And The Haunters (minus the coda) and down the decades i'll bet loads of people have bought an anthology containing one or the other version thinking they're getting an entirely different Bulwer-Lytton story. Turning to the thinking Ghost-Hunter's Bible also known as The Weekend Book Of Ghosts No. 5, we learn that Bulwer-Lytton based his story on the series of horrific events at 50 Berkeley Square, London W1, which, prior to the multiple manifestations at Borley Rectory, revelled in the title of "the most haunted house in England". The most famous 'true' story related to the address - and the one which inspired Bulwer-Lytton - occurred one night in the 1870's when two sailors chose the empty premises as their doss for the night. After giving them a few preliminary scares, a "shapeless and horrible" phantom appeared in the doorway of the upper bedroom. 'Bill', rushed passed it, tore down the stairs and out into the street where he found a policeman who took him for drunk. As they argued, with Bill trying to impress upon the lawman that his friend needed help, a terrible scream came from the upper room. They broke back into the house but too late to help 'Mick' who was lying dead in a heap on the floor, his neck broken. The haunting seems to have been terminated by the Second World War and 50 Berkeley Square is now the business premises of Maggs Brothers, Antiquarian Booksellers to the Queen.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 21, 2009 14:52:08 GMT
I also didn't realise that Bulwer-Lytton was the originator of the 'It was a dark and stormy night' line / concept / style of writing often ridiculed by people who think they know better.
Anyway - onwards!
Horror - A True Tale by John Berwick Harwood: Here's another story that isn't quite what it seems. You presume its central character is setting the scene for a ghost story, then there's a bit that suggests this might be a werewolf tale, and then it veers somewhere quite unexpected. Not a brilliant story but well enough told and with a good 'monster'.
The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I've not read any of Ms Braddon's stories before. I think she's been published by Ash-Tree but not Wordsworth. Here we have a tale of unrequited love, suicide, and a ghostly return from a watery grave. Quite a slight tale this would probably have had far more of an effect on the young JLP (but only before he discovered Charles Birkin)
The Merchant of Rotterdam by Henry Glassford Bell - Oh yes! Victorian horror comedy at it's most Dave Allen! A rich and cruel man breaks his leg kicking some poor fellow downstairs, has it amputated by the local doctor who 'needs one to teach with' and so employs the district's finest false leg maker to construct him a prosthesis of cork and springs that will be 'even finer than his flesh'. But oh no! "I am lost! I am lost! I am possessed by the devil in the shape of a cork leg!Stop me! For heaven's sake stop me!" The false leg goes mad and won't stop walking, even when the flesh has fallen from his bones. Lovely.
The Child Stealer- Erckmann & Chatrian. I've got the Ash-Tree Press collection of these guys but I've never read it. On the basis of this I really should - lean, cruel, bloodstained stuff that rounds out the volume nicely.
All in all a decent little book. It deserves a reprint.
Volume 3 next!
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Post by lobolover on Mar 21, 2009 19:36:00 GMT
I also didn't realise that Bulwer-Lytton was the originator of the 'It was a dark and stormy night' line / concept / style of writing often ridiculed by people who think they know better. Exactly . The battles ive fought over that sentence  Basicly there is nothing wrong with it, but people with very pale achievements in comparison to Mr. Bulwer-Lytton's tend to use it to down play his entiere fiction work, stating it as over complicated drivell . I myself havent read the story yet, but I intend to. I have however, read Zanoni and what's more the entiere "A strange story" in an atractive 20's or so book form, with nice cover with flowes and over all a superb enjoyment -and if youve ever seen the thing you know nobody sane would wadle through it would he not like it. The Collins (first one) well, it wasnt that bad, but seems to have more hapening then the other Collins, from what I hear . On "The merchant"- is it at least a bit "horrid" and not in the Northanger Abbey sense ? |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 22, 2009 15:38:07 GMT
The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I've not read any of Ms Braddon's stories before. I think she's been published by Ash-Tree but not Wordsworth. Here we have a tale of unrequited love, suicide, and a ghostly return from a watery grave. Quite a slight tale this would probably have had far more of an effect on the young JLP (but only before he discovered Charles Birkin) I reckon you're onto something with The Cold Embrace. I loved it as a suicidal teenager, not quite so much as a suicidal "adult". I think the story would have had more impact if Mrs. Braddon had provided names for the German student and the doomed heroine. It's difficult to care for so anonymous a pair. Don't know where Michel dug up his big legged, slapstick macabre The Merchant Of Rotterdam, but I'm glad he did. After The House And The Brain, this and Erckman-Chatrian's dead nasty, proto-Birkin The Child-Stealer were my favourites from number 2, although I know The Dream Woman made a big impression on me around the time I was more appreciative of The Cold Embrace. |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 9, 2021 19:57:12 GMT
Wilkie Collins - The Dream Woman : Unlike Volume One of this series, which kicked off with the lurid Wheatleyesque Ingoldsby manuscript, we get started here with something far more proper and Victorian, which sadly means there's a litle bit of implication, but in the end not an awful lot happens. Down on his luck Isaac Scatchard has a vision of a woman coming into his bedroom and trying to stab him to death. Years later he meets the woman and despite the protestations of his mother he marries her. The woman becomes a drunk and general ne'er do well and Isaac leaves her, haunted forever by the idea that one day she will try and kill him. And that's about it. : ( Temple Bar, Nov-Dec 1874). While spending a miserable birthday at a lonely inn, Isaac Scatchard, a luckless, middle aged ostler still living with his mother, wakes the household with his screams when a fair woman with a knife steals into the room and twice stabs out at him on the bed. The landlord turns him out on account of upsetting the servants - and all on account of a girlie nightmare! Seven years later, Isaac meets Rebecca Murdoch, a desperate woman fallen on hard times. She has been refused laudanum at the chemist as the assistant correctly suspects she is bent on self murder. Isaac falls in love for the first time. Mother is delighted when he announces his engagement - until she meets the bride to be, whom she recognises from her son's description of the spectre woman at the hotel. Mrs. Scatchard does not long survive a wedding she bitterly opposes. The marriage is miserable. Rebecca fast plummets into alcoholic despair. Seven years to the night of his prophetic dream, she creeps up on Isaac as he sleeps. I first read this in my teens - i.e., Varney the Vampyre was still at the infants school - and loved it. Several centuries on, still good, but doesn't grab me as it once did. Story possibly suggested by Catherine Crowe's The Monk's Story? |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 13, 2021 19:30:37 GMT
The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I've not read any of Ms Braddon's stories before. I think she's been published by Ash-Tree but not Wordsworth. Here we have a tale of unrequited love, suicide, and a ghostly return from a watery grave. Quite a slight tale this would probably have had far more of an effect on the young JLP (but only before he discovered Charles Birkin) I reckon you're onto something with The Cold Embrace. I loved it as a suicidal teenager, not quite so much as a suicidal "adult". I think the story would have had more impact if Mrs. Braddon had provided names for the German student and the doomed heroine. It's difficult to care for so anonymous a pair. Don't know where Michel dug up his big legged, slapstick macabre The Merchant Of Rotterdam, but I'm glad he did. After The House And The Brain, this and Erckman-Chatrian's dead nasty, proto-Birkin The Child-Stealer were my favourites from number 2, although I know The Dream Woman made a big impression on me around the time I was more appreciative of The Cold Embrace. I've since read Ms Braddon's collection The Face in the Glass and can wholeheartedly recommend it. It's one of the better volumes in the British Library Tales of the Weird series. |
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