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Post by dem bones on Jul 11, 2011 19:26:51 GMT
E. F. Bleiler (ed.) - Five Victorian Ghost Novels (Dover, 1971) Edward Gorey E. F. Bleiler - Introduction To The Dover Edition
Mrs. J. H. Riddell - The Uninhabited House Wilhelm Meinhold - The Amber Witch Amelia B. Edwards - Monsieur Maurice Vernon Lee - The Phantom Lover Charles Willing Beale - The Ghost Of Guir House
Sources and AcknowledgmentsWilhelm Meinhold - The Amber Witch - The Amber Witch (Translated by Lady Duff Gordon: David Nutt, 1846): "Next, the thumb-screws here will be put upon thee, which straightway will make the blood to spurt out at the tips of thy fingers: thou mayest see that they are still red with the blood of old Gussy Biehlke, who was burnt last year, and who, like thee, would not confess at first.". Rated by no less than the late, great E. F. Bleiler as the finest witchcraft novel of the nineteenth century. All done and dusted in under 130 pages, it's a good one to take a punt on, though blood and intestines fans are likely to come away from the experience a little underwhelmed. The Amber Witch is set on the Baltic island of Usedom during the Thirty years War and narrated by the humble pastor, Abraham Schweidler. Schweidler's daughter, sixteen-year-old Maria, has fallen foul of Sheriff Wittich by refusing to become his fancy woman. Wittich already has it in for her father - the pastor has had the temerity to demand the back pay owed him now the church has been torched and he and Maria are destitute - so the pair must be on their guard against his revenge. On one of her nightly visits to the beach, Maria discovers a lode of amber which ensures that at least they won't starve, but this gift from the Almighty proves her undoing. The sheriff, furious that she's not come crawling on hands and knees to beg he reconsider her suitability as his bit of fluff, colludes with the squint-eyed, hook-nosed harridan, Old Lizzie Kolken, to have Maria accused of the recent spate of witch-related crimes. The Tribunal accept Lizzie's revelations of Marie's nocturnal forays to the secluded beach as hard evidence that the girl is consorting with her master, the Devil, on a nightly basis. They hand her over to the jolly Sergeant of the torture chamber who confidently predicts "Ho Ho! I will tickle her in such ways that she will soon confess!". Sure enough, faced with the prospect of ladder, wheel, thumbscrews, Spanish boot & Co., Maria admits her guilt and is duly condemned to burn at the stake. That's the good news. The bad is Meingold pulls his punch to provide his audience with the dreaded "sickeningly happy ending". The two real witches are outed - you'll never guess who! - Maria is publicly exonerated and swiftly married off to the dashing young Lord Rudiger, the gallant who exposed the spiteful conspiracy. Meinhold's achievement is in presenting his material in such a way - missing chapters, frequent lapses into Latin, plenty meditations on the gospels, etc.., - that it convinces as an authentic historical document which, on its initial publication, was exactly how it was received. When you know The Amber Witch for a very clever literary hoax, the effect is diminished somewhat, particularly because, for all that she's faced with a horrendous fate, Maria emerges from her trials and tribulations with not a hair out of place and nary a scratch, but it's an engrossing read true enough. I enjoyed it more this second time around.
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