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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 21, 2009 16:34:05 GMT
Michel Parry (ed) - Reign Of Terror: The 3rd Corgi Book Of Victorian Horror Stories (Corgi, 1977)William Carleton - Wildgoose Lodge J. S. Le Fanu - Sir Dominick's Bargain Henry James - The Romance Of Certain Old Clothes Rhoda Broughton - Under The Cloak George MacDonald - The Grey Wolf Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body Snatcher Hugh Conway - The Secret Of The Stradivarius E. Lynn Linton - The Fate Of Madame Cabanel If Mr D could 'lay some scan on me' for the cover of this (young lady with an old head on her shoulders...er...lap) I'd be very grateful as I plunge into the next of these on the whole very readable volumes! William Carleton - Wildgoose Lodge: I spoke too soon. We kick off this time with a tale from this Irish writer whose prose style is unfortunately rather turgid. That, coupled with his attempts at authentic-sounding dialogue, makes some of this a bit of a trial. Which is a shame because this is a actually a pretty good horror story, with a couple of really horrible murders towards the end. Stick with it if you fancy a non-supernatural tale of mob-violence.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 22, 2009 9:51:14 GMT
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
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Post by lobolover on Mar 22, 2009 11:43:11 GMT
Haven't read anything but the Screw from Henry James . Might change that soon, though .
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Post by dem bones on Mar 22, 2009 17:24:51 GMT
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. 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 MentenE. 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.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 22, 2009 18:28:12 GMT
And to round off this volume:
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body Snatcher. There are some embarrassing gaps in my reading and this is or rather was one of them. And it's brilliant - absolutely the highlight of this particular book. Some cracking dialogue and Stevenson's brilliant page long take on the Resurrectionists coming to a sleepy Scottish village are the highlights in this utter classic that everyone should read.
Hugh Conway - The Secret of the Stradivarius. Oh marvellous - music-based horror! A bloodstained violin is the centrepiece of this sorry tale of love and jealousy which takes a while to get going, and while no masterpiece it's a decent enough timewaster.
E. Lynn Linton - The Fate of Madame Carbanel. It's not nice I'll tell you that. Leave it to a lady to provide us with something 'right cruel and nasty' to finish off the book with - a tale of possible vampirism and overly superstitious villagers.
And that's it. For my money the Stevenson should have gone last, but I'm beginning to increasingly wonder if Mr Parry planned these four books (or even five - did the promised fifth volume ever appear?) as a single volume. Still these are nice little books and I've still got number four to read!
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Post by dem bones on Mar 22, 2009 23:26:01 GMT
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.
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Post by lobolover on Mar 24, 2009 14:13:19 GMT
Say, arent you doing the first book ?
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 30, 2009 19:03:52 GMT
I have. It's in this section ;D
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jun 4, 2021 11:13:37 GMT
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. 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.The 1947 film of Uncle Silas starring the very good (as usual) Jean Simmons (as the re-named Caroline Ruthyn) was on Talking Pictures TV yesterday. Very well made, the film builds to a very suspenseful climax. Two characters meet extremely nasty ends.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jun 4, 2021 11:56:20 GMT
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) A vast improvement on their Three Men in a Boat cover. Which is surely one of the worst covers of all time.
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