Reign of Terror Vol. 3 Ed Michel Parry

Sheridan LeFanu- Sir Dominick's Bargain: A 'deal with the devil' tale. Reading this I realised I haven't read much LeFanu & I probably should. The plot is fairly standard stuff but where the author succeeds most is in his description of the rotting manor house at the start - all caved in floors and stained woodwork, in the occasional bit of gleeful nastiness (oh I do like a bit of that) and in the sort-of twist close to the end when you think Sir D may have escaped.

Henry James - The Romance of Certain Old Clothes: A well written tale that's almost not a ghost story at all - pretty much until the last line in fact. Some people find James hard going but I've read more difficult stories in this series so it might be the one to try to see if you'd get on with his writing style.

Rhoda Broughton - Under the Cloak: A fussy young rich woman who hates train rides gets on one and has her sapphires nicked by a bloke with a beard. More a curiosity than a tale of terror, the central character evokes little sympathy and more than a couple of giggles.

George Macdonald - The Gray Wolf: Young man lost in a storm, taken in by an old woman and her beautiful daughter and there's a wolf on the prowl. It couldn't (gasp!) be a werewolf could it?A well enough done take on an old theme

Ha! I was hoping for a flimsy excuse to introduce this into the proceedings. It's Wordsworth Editions' current featured book. feast your eyes, gloat your soul on the glorious cover!

Sheridan Le Fanu - Uncle Silas (Wordsworth Editions, 2009)



Introduction by Kathryn White

"I thought I saw a human face, about the most terrible my fancy could have called up, looking fixedly into the room. The face gazed towards the bed, and in the imperfect light looked like a livid mask, with chalky eyes.’

Master of the ghost story genre M.R. James commented that the, ‘final terrific murder-scene and escape can hardly be forgotten’ by those who have read Uncle Silas.

Neither does the opening disappoint. As the November winds wail in ivied chimneys we are drawn into a Victorian Gothic atmosphere of menacing, sombre gloom and ebony shadows. Sheridan Le Fanu leaves us in no doubt that we are in for a feast of exciting drama, luring us into the intensely claustrophobic world of the nineteenth century sensational novel.

Le Fanu is amongst the top-notch exponents of the creepy, the criminal and the oppressive. In this tale of the orphaned teenage heiress Maud Ruthyn, fearing for her life at the hands of her sinister uncle, he has created a rattling good plot with the depth of a social novel and the power of high romance.

E. F. Bleiler - Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu (Dover, 1964)



E. F. Bleiler - Introduction

Squire Toby's Will
Shalken The Painter
Madam Crowl's Ghost
The Haunted Baronet
Green Tea
The Familiar
Mr. Justice Harbottle
Carmilla
The Fortunes Of Sir Robert Ardagh
Strange Disturbance In Aungiers Street
The Dead Sexton
Ghost Stories Of The Tiled House
The White Cat Of Drumgunnol
Sir Dominick's Bargain
Ulter De Lacy
An Authentic Narrative Of A Haunted House

Cover Design: Theodore Menten

E. F. Bleiler - J. S. Le Fanu: Ghost Stories & Tales Of Mystery (Dover, 1975)

E. F. Bleiler - Introduction

The Room In The Dragon Volant
Wicked Captain Walshawe Of Wauling
Ghost Stories Of Chapelizod
The Child That Went With The Fairies
The Vision Of Tom Chuff
A Chapter In The History Of A Tyrone Family
Dickon The Devil
The Evil Guest
The Murdered Cousin
Stories Of Lough Guir
Laura Silver Bell
The Drunkard's Dream
The Ghost And The Bonesetter
The Mysterious Lodger

Cover Photograph: Glen S. Heller


Not quite so blessed in the good looks department - in fact, i'd go as far as to say the Ghost Stories & Mysteries cover is downright ugly - but this pairing from Dover books are as close as dammit to a 'complete ghost stories of ...' with a handful of non-supernatural gems thrown in for good measure. E. F. Bleiler has even taken the precaution of including the anonymous The Mysterious Lodger, attributed to Le Fanu by no less than M. R. James, although Bleiler himself remains far from convinced.

I'm sure we established beyond doubt that there was no #5 - not from Corgi, at any rate, but I still find myself habitually googling the bastard!

Something else to appreciate about Reign Of Terror: they both fished from the same pool of authors but it appears Michel studiously avoided stories already available in Hugh Lamb's then recent Victorian anthologies. What with these, the 2 volume Penguin reprint of Montague Summers' The Supernatural Omnibus and select Peter Haining anthologies for Gollancz, the 1970's were a marvellous era for short Victorian macabre fiction!

Here's a note on the impact of The Body-Snatchers on a reader of the Pall Mall Gazette at the time of publication. It seems a Mr. Goodsir had been a pupil of Dr. K--- and wasn't best pleased at Stevenson's tribute to his old tutor.

The Fate Of Madame Cabenal has since resurfaced in a number of collections, and is a great favourite of mine. Pievrot, a hamlet in Brittany. Jules Cabanel, father of his housekeeper Adele’s child, returns from Paris with an English bride. Adele welcomes her new mistress with a bouquet of scarlet poppies, belladonna and aconite, and, in concert with Martin Briolic, is soon plotting her rivals downfall. The high rate of infant mortality in the region gives them all the ammunition they need … What particularly impressed me was the sheer bloody-mindedness of the story. Having read a fair bit of Victorian horror fiction, i was blithely expecting the cavalry to arrive and ruin it all at the eleventh hour. But they don't.

Rhoda Broughton was responsible for the similarly grim melodrama The Man With The Nose, as featured in Mr. Lamb's ace Victorian Nightmares. As such, Under The Cloak was a slight disappointment, but then, in my weird and terrifying, taste-free universe, very few stories can live with The Man With The Nose.

Oh, and I rate the barbaric Wildgoose Lodge very highly as another of those you-know-what's-coming-but-rather-wish-it-wasn't stories.

I have. It's in this section ;D