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Post by lukemorningstar on Feb 18, 2010 23:57:19 GMT
Dem! I just started my copy tonight and I'm four stories in. Loved the senseless brutality of the Banditti - and I'm looking forward to your take on 'The Parricide's Tale' possibly the best one yet.
My very first Wordsworth and so far so good. I'm just starting the second phase of my OU Degree and already a mighty distraction looms on the horizon (hooraah!) but then again I am doing an English Lit. degree so it could be worse.
I'm rather honoured and chuffed to be reading alongside you (figuratively speaking)
Cheers!
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Post by dem bones on Feb 19, 2010 10:10:21 GMT
that is very kind of you Colin. kind, but foolhardy! strikes me i've already commented on several of the stories elsewhere, so doubtless will soon resort to my old trick of regurgitating the original, sub-illiterate drivel all over this thread. then we'll see how "honoured and chuffed" you feel about it all.
Charles Maturin - The Parricide's Tale: In the great scheme of Melmoth The Wanderer, this takes place approximately 200 pages into the novel in the volume concerning Moncada, a Spanish noble who has fallen foul of the Inquisition and been imprisoned in a monastery. With the dubious assistance of a thoroughly unpleasant monk, Moncada is attempting his escape. As the pair hide in a ruined chapel awaiting the cover of darkness, the Monk passes the time by singing filthy songs until he gets bored and turns his attention to putting the horrors up his companion instead with the dreadful story of his life and crimes.
Consigned to the monastery after slitting his father's throat, our man impresses the Holy fathers with his willingness to inform on the novices, so they appoint him as their enforcer-cum-executioner, assuring him that for each transgression discovered and punished, he lifts some of the burden from his soul. Needless to say, the Monk, a sadist, voyeur and card-carrying misanthrope, takes abnormal pleasure in his work. Comes the day when a young woman disguises herself as a novice to reunite with her lover, and the Monk is onto their little game in a flash. The Abbot gives the order for them to be walled up in their cell and "it was my penance (no, my delight) to watch at the door, under the pretence of precluding the possibility of escape ...." And it's at this point the story turns just plain nasty.
in a word, excellent.
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Post by lukemorningstar on Feb 19, 2010 13:33:21 GMT
I completely agree with you that The Parricide's Tale is an excellent little story and very nasty too. Definitely the 'Kowlongo Plaything' of Gothic Short Stories so far..............
(Trust me to bring a reference to Pan into the discussion)
So far a really enjoyable read.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 19, 2010 17:14:29 GMT
I liked The Parricide's Tale a lot - far more than Kowlongo Plaything Mr Morningstar! . In fact this is a splendid little volume of Gothic literature overall & right at this moment I'm extolling its virtues (and incorporating my comments above) in an essay I'm slogging away at on gothic fiction that should be going into a book of all of my reviews, essays and other rubbish (which is why I've been a bit absent from the board of late).
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Post by dem bones on Feb 19, 2010 19:16:41 GMT
My very first Wordsworth and so far so good. I'm just starting the second phase of my OU Degree and already a mighty distraction looms on the horizon (hooraah!) but then again I am doing an English Lit. degree so it could be worse. The Parricide's Tale is an excellent little story and very nasty too. Definitely the 'Kowlongo Plaything' of Gothic Short Stories so far.............. (Trust me to bring a reference to Pan into the discussion) Another very Pan-like Gothic for you, Colin; William Mudford - The Iron Shroud: Vivenzio - "the noble and the generous, the fearless in battle, the pride of Naples in her sunny hours of peace" - is captured by total bastard Tolfi. Each night the walls of his collapsing prison close in until you seriously begin to wonder if Mudford is really going to allow our saintly hero be crushed to death! The ending is one of my favourite episodes in Gothic fiction. George W. "Wagner The Werewolf" Reynolds liked it enough to rewrite it as The Iron Coffin, an episode of Faust: A Romance, featuring an improbable guest star appearance from Lucrezia Borgia. if you want to try them for yourself, the indispensable HorrorMasters.com have them both. MudfordReynoldsSincere best wishes to you with that degree.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 20, 2010 15:31:37 GMT
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body-Snatcher: Fictitious account of the Burke and Hare murders. Edinburgh, 182-. Fettes, a medical student of some promise, is assigned the duty of paying the Resurrection Men who deliver corpses out back of the dissecting rooms for Dr. K--- to distribute among his classes. It is soon obvious to Fettes that many of the "subjects" did not die of natural causes - one such, 'Jane Galbraith' (Burke victim Mary Patterson) is his drinking partner of the previous day - but he's imposed upon by star pupil Wolfe "Toddy" McFarlane to keep his suspicions to himself as no good can come of pointing the finger. McFarlane has good reason to silence him, for he too is a murderer. When a man named Gray insults him in a bar, he delivers his body to Fettes and bribes him to keep his mouth shut. The pair go into business together, digging up bodies from neighbouring churchyards until the night they receive their comeuppance following their exhumation of a farmer's wife at Glencorse. Despite its "classic" status, the story has not been without its detractors, mainly on the grounds of its supernatural ending which has been criticised as gratuitous and not entirely convincing. Closer to the time of its publication ( Pall Mall Gazette Christmas Extra, 1884), there was a different angle of attack. James Goodsir had been one of Dr. Knox's pupils and he wasn't at all happy at the alleged slur on his old teacher's alleged good name. "It will be said, of course, that The Body-Snatcher is only a piece of fiction. A pleasant piece of fiction, certainly, to attach the stigma of cold-blooded deliberate murder to the name and memory of a man who has relatives and friends and admirers amongst the few still living of his many thousands of pupils ... When in the guise of fiction an author maligns in the most unmistakable terms the memories of men who have not long departed, he should recollect that some one still may live who can answer and refute his calumnies." The story has been reprinted in several anthologies, of course, but it's also easy to find online. Try the Vault of Diabolical Downloads search engine for this and other Victorian horror downloads. This engine prowls the excellent Gaslight, HorrorMasters and Amalgamated Brotherhood Of Spooks sites where you'll find hundreds of horrors from the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 22, 2010 10:17:02 GMT
Anon - The Spectre Bride: The Black Forest, 1655. Gentle Lady Clotilda of the unsullied bosom is swept off her feet by the handsome stranger who calls unannounced at the Castle of Hernswolf, introduces himself as her "impassioned admirer" and strangles her father for joking about the supernatural! Despite the latter alarming faux pas, Clotilda is besotted and begs him to take her as his bride. This is a bad move. The stranger is the Wandering Jew, doomed to gather a million souls for the Devil before he can gain death's release, and his track record to date is only 999. As Lord Probert mentions, the wedding ceremony is a high-watermark of total Gothic excess, while the Monk-ish ending is grim even by these standards - Clotilda has done nothing to warrant so appalling a fate. Horribly good. Anna Letitia Aiken - Sir Bertrand: A Fragment: Sir Bertrand, hopelessly lost on the moor after dark, is lured to a desolate, crumbling mansion by the toll of a bell. Once inside, the door slams shut behind him whereupon he's besieged by all manner of supernatural manifestations. A dead hand grabs his. A spectral figure thrusts forth "the bloody stump of an arm". It's not all bad news, however as a bouncing blue light leads him to a vault where a beautiful corpse sits up in her coffin and offers him her arms. Sir Bertrand favours her with a hug, she throws back her veil and plants a kiss on his lips. The fragment ends on a cheerful note as Sir Bertrand and his bride, now fully restored to life, are transported to a wondrous chamber where gorgeous nymphs play MOR music and a lavish feast awaits. Fair enough, it's probably not that great a story, but from what I can make of Mrs. Aiken's brief introductory essay, On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, Aiken's intention in writing Sir Bertrand was to create an atmosphere of dreamlike wonder, more in keeping with The Arabian Nights and The Castle Of Otranto than the horrible excesses of Monk Lewis and his disciples. if I've got that right, then I reckon she achieved her aim. Sir Bertrand and The Spectre Bride also show up in Peter Haining's extremely entertaining Great British Tales Of Terror which, all going well, will be the next stop on the Vault Gothic tour they're all talking about! Haining isn't as accurate with dates and attributions of authorship as he might be, but let's not worry about that just yet. Among several highlights: Charles Maturin - Leixlip Castle: An Irish Family Legend. According to those who know these things, Maturin's only known short story, Leixlip Castle details the tragedies that befall the three daughters of Sir Redmond Blaney. As these include an abduction by an evil fairy woman (very creepy), an unforeseen wedding day massacre (the groom inexplicably goes gaga in the bridal chamber) and an ill-advised innocent dabble in witchcraft, it's certainly lively enough, even if it never quite matches the nastiness of Melmoth ...'s The Parricide's Tale.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 2, 2010 14:39:56 GMT
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper: I've never managed a concise or even intelligible summary of this, for once, truly unsettling story. This seems to be Gilman's only contribution to the genre and even then, it's contentious whether or not it involves the "supernatural", though I'll give it the benefit of the doubt! Essentially, the narrator, a woman of ill health, is assisted on her way to a full breakdown by her overbearing and insufferably patronising husband John, a doctor, who insists that there is nothing at all wrong with her, and she really must buck her ideas up. Confined to her room much of the time, she grows obsessed with the hideous wallpaper, gradually convincing herself that she can see the outline of a woman in the pattern. The weeks pass, the 'woman' becomes her single trusted companion, until her sanity gives out and ...
it's no great surprise to learn that Gilman (later Stetson) based this on her own experience, or that she divorced her first husband shortly after it was published. What was that crap Aickman spouted about there only being forty good ghost stories?
Richard Middleton - The Bird in the Garden: Domestic squalor in a West London basement flat as a family of alcoholics and their pitiful female lodger come to blows. The little boy, neglected by all but his kindly if eccentric Uncle Josh (who is only there on account of his lovely pension money), watches the fatal episode through his fever. Or maybe he's already dead and nobody's noticed? should re-read this, really, as I was a bit knackered. A Middleton supernatural & horror stories selection would make for a strong Wordsworth.
Sir Walter Scott - The Tapestried Chamber: Woodville Castle, somewhere in Western England. General Browne, recently returned from the American war, is renowned for his bravery in conflict. But his courage is undone at the castle of his former fag at Eton, Lord Woodville, where he's visited during the night by a spectral old hag. As Gothic ghost stories go, this one probably isn't horrible enough (we never learn of the old woman's abominable crimes, or at least, not in anything like the graphic detail we demand), but the visitation in the chamber is effective.
Here's three I made earlier - warned you! - though have largely resisted the temptation to translate them into English.
Mary Wilkins Freeman - Luella Miller: New England. The comely Luella drains the energy from all who attend her, she being either too ill or indolent to do anything more strenuous than sit in her rocking chair. A steady stream of helpers, including her sister and a doctor, go to their graves exhausted.
Edgar Allan Poe - Berenice: Any story which begins with the lines "Misery is manifold. The Wretchedness of Earth is multiform" isn't going to be a bundle of laughs. An almost-vampire story, by virtue of the narrator's fixation with the doomed heroine's immaculate teeth. Berenice suffers from catalepsy and is duly entombed alive. After she's been consigned to the vault her cousin awakens from "a confused and exciting dream ..."
Poe at quite possibly his most creepy and diseased. on re-reading it, i have to disagree with me and say it is very funny.
E. F. Benson - The Room In The Tower: “Suddenly a voice which I knew well broke the stillness, the voice of Mrs. Stone, saying ‘Jack will show you to your room: I have given you the room in the tower.’ It seemed to come from near the gate in the red-brick wall that bounded the lawn, and looking up, I saw that the grass outside was sewn thick with gravestones. A curious greyish light shone from them, and I could read the lettering on the grave nearest me, and it was ‘In evil memory of Julia Stone.’
From his early teens the narrator has been plagued by the same ominous dream. Now aged 30, his premonition is about to be played out for real when he visits his friend John Clinton at the Sussex cottage and Mrs. Clinton repeats the words he’s come to dread.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 16, 2012 0:46:41 GMT
Shalken The Painter - and i had to put my lit git head on special for this. The story first appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in 1839 and was revived in his posthumously published collection The Purcell Papers as Strange Event In The Life Of Shalken The Painter. This version, according to E. F. Bleiler, is the more frequently anthologised (I just found it in the first book i checked, Fontana's The Vampire Lovers tie-in). It begins; "You will no doubt be surprised, my dear friend, at the subject of the following narrative ...." In 1851, Le Fanu privately printed his exceedingly rare Ghost Stories & Mysteries under the McGlashan imprint. This four story collection included a revised Shalken The Painter which begins: "There exists, at this moment, in good preservation, a remarkable work of Shalken's."Bearing in mind that Bleiler was writing in 1964, it's not impossible that the revised text is now more commonly reprinted than the original, but i'm guessing by the longer title that Wordsworth have run the original/ Purcell Papers version. If the demon lover isn't quite vampiric enough in that version, you can find the revised, 1851 Shalken The Painter in E. F. Bleiler's Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu, Alan Hull Walton's The Open Grave and Michael Cox's Illustrated J. S. Le Fanu, probably more. I read the revised version, "Shalken The Painter", and found it excellent and most satisfying. Then I wanted to compare it with the first version, "Strange Event In The Life Of Shalken The Painter". But starting to read this, I felt the beginning was not as artistically integrated self-standing as the revised version. I thought it was frustrating, because it opens on a loose end in the middle of unexplained events, and, addressing the reader, assumes the reader already has previous knowledge of the situation (perhaps from an earlier introductory text within The Purcell Papers, linking to the story?). I felt left out. I was so disappointed that I put the story aside. And I didn't want to ruin my positive first impression from the revised version, with a less than perfect re-reading. The revised version also opens up much more strikingly, cutting to the essence immediately.
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rob4
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 104
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Post by rob4 on Nov 8, 2013 12:50:12 GMT
Anna Letitia Aiken - Sir Bertrand: A Fragment: Sir Bertrand, hopelessly lost on the moor after dark, is lured to a desolate, crumbling mansion by the toll of a bell. Once inside, the door slams shut behind him whereupon he's besieged by all manner of supernatural manifestations. A dead hand grabs his. A spectral figure thrusts forth "the bloody stump of an arm". It's not all bad news, however as a bouncing blue light leads him to a vault where a beautiful corpse sits up in her coffin and offers him her arms. Sir Bertrand favours her with a hug, she throws back her veil and plants a kiss on his lips. The fragment ends on a cheerful note as Sir Bertrand and his bride, now fully restored to life, are transported to a wondrous chamber where gorgeous nymphs play MOR music and a lavish feast awaits. Fair enough, it's probably not that great a story, but from what i can make of Mrs. Aiken's brief introductory essay, On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, Aiken's intention in writing Sir Bertrand was to create an atmosphere of dreamlike wonder, more in keeping with The Arabian Nights and The Castle Of Otranto than the horrible excesses of Monk Lewis and his disciples. if i've got that right, i reckon she achieved her aim. Sir Bertrand and The Spectre Bride also show up in Peter Haining's extremely entertaining Great British Tales Of Terror which, all going well, will be the next stop on the Vault Gothic tour they're all talking about! Haining isn't as accurate with dates and attributions of authorship as he might be, but let's not worry about that just yet. Among several highlights: for the pedantic amongst us - according to this link Sir Bertrand has been assigned to the wrong Aikin - it should be her less famous brother John Aikin. rictornorton.co.uk/gothic/aikin1.htm
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rob4
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 104
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Post by rob4 on Dec 30, 2013 13:56:27 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Dec 30, 2013 20:21:09 GMT
very well done to Dr. Dick Collins for putting a name to the author of this mini-masterpiece, the stand-out of an excellent Wordsworth selection. As to the Aikin's/ Sir Bertrand, Patricia L. Skarda & Nora Crow Jaffe come to the same conclusion in The Evil Image: Two Centuries of Gothic Short Fiction & Poetry, so am inclined to agree with greater minds. Thanks for the info, Rob.
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Post by kalamona on Apr 17, 2014 18:49:54 GMT
very well done to Dr. Dick Collins for putting a name to the author of this mini-masterpiece, the stand-out of an excellent Wordsworth selection. As to the Aikin's/ Sir Bertrand, Patricia L. Skarda & Nora Crow Jaffe come to the same conclusion in The Evil Image: Two Centuries of Gothic Short Fiction & Poetry, so am inclined to agree with greater minds. Thanks for the info, Rob. I'm afraid there is some mistake here. Using Google Books you can find "The Spectre Bride" in Pocket Magazine, but it is a quite different story from the one in the Wordsworth volume. It was written by Thomas Hall, which is apparently a pen name used by Ainsworth. The "Spectre Bride" in the Wordsworth volume can also be found with the help of Google Books, but without any author given. For example in a volume named "Legends of Terror! and Tales of the Wonderful and the Wild" (London, 1826) it is stated that it is "from the German". I was, however, unable to find it in German.
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Post by jamesdoig on Apr 17, 2014 23:11:11 GMT
The "Spectre Bride" in the Wordsworth volume can also be found with the help of Google Books, but without any author given. For example in a volume named "Legends of Terror! and Tales of the Wonderful and the Wild" (London, 1826) it is stated that it is "from the German". I was, however, unable to find it in German. David Blair must have mixed it up with the Ainsworth story of the same name. The anonymous "Spectre Bride" is also in volume two of an earlier work with one of those grand nineteenth century titles: The Flowers of Literature; or encyclopaedia of anecdote: a well diversified collection in history, biography, poetry, and romance. Jeux D'esprit, traditionary relics, essays, critical scraps (of pith and moment) with translations of approved authors, ancient and modern. By William Oxberry, Comedian. (W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1821). This was actually a monthly periodical edited by Oxberry that kicked off on 1 August 1820 and which was bound up into volumes every 6 months. And the "Spectre Bride" is also in the 2nd edition: The Flowers of Literature; consisting of selections from history, biography, poetry, and romance; Jeux D'esprit, traditionary relics and essays with translations from approved authors, revised and corrected from the work of the late William Oxberry, Comedian (2nd edition, Thomas Tegg, 1824). This edition is much different in content from the 1st, but still includes "The Spectre Bride." This might suggest William Oxberry translated it, or possibly even wrote it, though it's equally possible he ripped it off another source. He was an actor who has a wikipedia entry and, dare I say it, acted in Monk Lewis's Castle Spectre!! I've a vague memory someone has sorted these ascriptions - Doug Anderson maybe - unless I'm mixing up it with another story.
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 8, 2020 20:42:14 GMT
No 252 Rue M le Prince - Ralph Adams Cram. Unremarkable haunted room shenanigans he'll probably getting a thread soon for his very short (six story) collection, Black Spirits And White (1895) from which No 252 Rue M le Prince is taken. i think he's great, personally, though perhaps the insanely over the top In Kropfsberg Keep might have been more suited to this volume: A mad Count locks all his debauched guests in the ballroom then sets fire to the Castle before hanging himself in a suit of armour. Sister Madellena is another classic - or maybe i've just got a thing about walled-up-nuns - which, i admit, does read a little schmaltzy in part, but the horrible bit is worth the effort and a brilliant cameo from the inevitable sadistic Mother Superior. Needless to say, i'm looking forward to a rematch with No 252 Rue M le Prince and The Dead Valley now. I came across "Spirits Black and White" a few minutes ago, so thought I'd add this link for anybody interested:
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