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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 27, 2010 15:01:56 GMT
Sheridan LeFanu - In a Glass DarklyGreen Tea The Familiar Mr Justice Harbottle The Room In Le Dragon Volant Carmilla At last I've got round to reading Wordsworth's edition of this linked collection. A quick bit of cross-referencing with the three volume Ash-Tree set reveals that the ATP volumes don't include 'The Room In Le Dragon Volant' on account of it's not being supernatural, apparently. 'For now we see through a glass darkly' 1 Corinthians 13:12 And I always thought it was something Lewis Carroll thought up Each story in the book is presented as 'from the case files of Dr Hessalius'. Whether or not he's going to turn out to be LeFanu's equivalent of Dr Terror (Cushing rather than Black) remains to be seen but somehow I don't think so. In fact I can't quite work out at the moment how this linking / framing technique benefits the stories but maybe it will become clear later on. Green Tea I'd not read this before and it's a stunner to open the volume with. Reverend Jennings meddles in things that man (and especially vicars) should leave alone and finds himself being haunted by a demon in the form of a monkey that keeps whispering to him to do terrible things. A horrible bloody ending rounds off this brisk little opener. The Familiar Is a bit of a let down after Green Tea but is still a solid tale of retribution. Naval officer Sir James Barton returns to Dublin after a spell at sea to find himself being receving unpleasant meassages from someone signing himself as 'The Watcher'. He gets to be the subject of a haunting as well, mainly because he got up to no good with a young lady on board his boat and then beat the crap out of her father when he objected.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 27, 2010 19:32:52 GMT
the ATP volumes don't include 'The Room In Le Dragon Volant' on account of it's not being supernatural, apparently. a locked room mystery if i remember, widely considered a classic of its kind, but i far prefer Mr. Justice Harbottle and, predictably, Carmilla. i really should reread Green Tea as i've a feeling i bombed through it the first time and came away a little disappointed that it hadn't blown me away, although i liked the little monkey chap. i'd be interested to learn if the framing device is that crucial as i only know the five stories from their anthology appearances. sorry bout the tiny scan but i had to borrow it from the Wordsworth site!
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 1, 2010 7:48:51 GMT
Thanks Mr D! There's a different, more cartoonish owl on my cover.
Mr Justice Harbottle I'd not heard of this story before but I suspect in the appropriate quarters it's probably considered something of a classic. The title character is a villainous man of 'the law' who, despite warnings to the contrary, orders the execution of a man whose wife he has also stolen. As a result he gets tried by a ghostly council and awaits his inevitable fate - the noose! The really standout sequence here is when the judge falls asleep in his carriage and suddenly London is transformed into a bleak and lonely moor with the only thing to be seen on the landscape is a huge gallows swinging with corpses. Excellent stuff.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 1, 2010 8:46:48 GMT
Oh, i can do you the cartoonish owl one, no problem! Yeah, Mr. Justice Harbottle is a stormer. i'm glad you started this thread as we seemed to have mentioned Le Fanu an awful lot on here without ever really getting around to comment on individual stories. credit where credit's due, we had one reader on Vault Mk. I complaining that Carmilla came as a huge disappointment as it wasn't quite the hot girl-on-girl grappling fest The Vampire Lovers had led him to believe, but i'm struggling to remember any other great ones before now.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 1, 2010 9:45:34 GMT
I was quite surprised we had no thread on Mr LeF! I'm becoming a fan though, as his hit rate with me (Schalken, Green Tea, Harbottle) is pretty high. I remember reading about Green Tea in Daniel Farson's Beaver Book of Horror, I think.
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 1, 2010 11:21:54 GMT
There is an earlier version of "Mr Justice Harbottle", which is called "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street".
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Post by cw67q on Mar 1, 2010 13:57:15 GMT
This is a great collection, the framing devise is very perfunctory and doesn't add anything to the tales.
I think my favourite down the years has been the Familar (aka t Watcher in a slightly different format), which was also MRJ's favourite IIRC (just though I'd mention that John :-)).
Mr Harbottle's in particular has grown on me over the years, last time I looked at it I found it very funny. Le Fanu does have a fine sense of humour, but it isn't very obvious at first (i.e. goes over my head until a subsequent reread). I think it much bettre than the earlier tale that Dr Strange mentions which, despite its reputation, is one of the very few Le Fanu tales that have fallen flat for me.
Dragon Volant I remember as an ok-ish mystery tale. It is the only take that I've nver returned to reread.
- Chris
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Post by dem bones on Mar 1, 2010 14:40:35 GMT
I was quite surprised we had no thread on Mr LeF! I'm becoming a fan though, as his hit rate with me (Schalken, Green Tea, Harbottle) is pretty high. I remember reading about Green Tea in Daniel Farson's Beaver Book of Horror, I think. Yep, that's the one, though i think some might be more familiar with the reprint as The Hamlyn Book Of Horror two years later. Was the Beaver edition illustrated? it's been commented that the artwork in the Hamlyn was pretty hard-hitting! Mark kindly gave me a copy of Mr. Farson's absolutely barking horror novel Transplant which is every bit as enjoyable. if i'm not mistaken, Bram Stoker was on better than nodding terms with Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungiers Street when he wrote The Judge's House, and it seems widely accepted that Dracula's Guest was inspired by a scene from Carmilla.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 1, 2010 14:45:19 GMT
Well Chris, MRJ and I have not always seen eye to eye Seeing as you say that though, I may well give The Familiar another go as I was a bit tired when I read it. I can't say I saw a lot of humour in Justice Harbottle though, although the description of the judge himself is a wonderful sketch of cankerous humanity. Does anyone know if In A Glass is early LeFanu? Was he using the linking device to 'justify' writing stories of the supernatural? Or to allow himself to write something like Carmilla and not get into trouble with it?
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Post by dem bones on Mar 1, 2010 15:08:05 GMT
as several of the stories had already appeared in magazines , i strongly suspect the framing device was added specifically for the book, though i'm not sure why - so far everyone seems to think its rubbish! i doubt it was an attempt to justify the inclusion of Carmilla. i never heard him getting into any trouble over it. were the Victorians really as hung up over sex as we like to paint them? he certainly had a fondness for reworking his stories, as was mentioned recently on the Gothic Short Stories thread which contains a fair bit on Shalken The Painter.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 1, 2010 15:15:31 GMT
The Beaver edition was a small-format paperback (wasn't the Hamlyn one large format and hardcover?) and was illustrated with all those lovely classic woodcuts of werewolves and Vlad the Impaler having lunch next to all those corpses.
I can't remember much about the book now, except that the bit on films ended talking about how today's movies (??1973) had gone too far. It even quoted the ad-line from the rather obscure Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (New sickening horror to make your flesh creep! See the werewolf who wants to do nothing but rape tear and kill!!) etc.
That and MRJ in the same book - not a bad primer for the little 'uns!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 1, 2010 15:33:24 GMT
It's funny how you rub along not really knowing what you are doing when you write horror and then as you get your vault special needs education you suddenly realize that there is a name for what you like and what you do. I realized after reading this thread that I am a fan of Fanu because of his use of indirect horror. I love being unsure about the spiritual side of a tale. This is not to say I don't like being slapped in the face with the gruesome as well but essentially when its indirect you get a kind of open door effect which is unsettling.
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 2, 2010 11:24:38 GMT
Does anyone know if In A Glass is early LeFanu? Was he using the linking device to 'justify' writing stories of the supernatural? Or to allow himself to write something like Carmilla and not get into trouble with it? "In A Glass Darkly" is very late Le Fanu - published just a year before he died. At that point he'd been writing supernatural stories for over 30 years - so I doubt he felt like he needed to "justify" himself. As for the framing device - maybe he intended to write more stories featuring Dr Hesselius, if he had lived to do so, and was just in the early stages of developing the character. Personally, I have a bit of a soft spot for the "supernatural detective" sub-genre - and on top of the other "borrowings" made by Bram Stoker, Hesselius is an obvious precursor to Van Helsing (and John Silence, Carnacki, et al). Some good stuff on Le Fanu at the following link, especially if your main area of interest is lesbian vampires - mural.uv.es/franqui/engmain.html
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 2, 2010 11:55:25 GMT
Nice link Dr Strange! I knew virtually nothing about LeFanu before reading that.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 2, 2010 19:08:22 GMT
especially if you're main area of interest is lesbian vampires
Bring on the Lesbian vampires ;D I resisted the 'come on the...'
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