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Post by ripper on Sept 24, 2016 9:22:29 GMT
The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories edited by Michael Sims (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Blurb: Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula's Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity's oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising, often legendary cast, from Charles Dickens and Margaret Oliphant to Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W.F. Harvey. Amelia Edwards' chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell, ("The Old Nurse's Story") and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey's Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Michael Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.
Contents:
Introduction: The View from a Grave by Michael Sims The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards The Trial for Murder by Charles Dickens The Captain of the Pole-Star by Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Edmund Orme by Henry James The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs The Southwest Chamber by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman They by Rudyard Kipling The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce August Heat by W.F. Harvey Acknowledgments Bibliography and Further Reading
I ordered this one from our library catalogue and had no idea of its contents. Just glancing through it, my first impressions are that it is a solid and safe collection, with well-known stories, particularly to those whose interests include vintage supernatural fiction. Not a bad anthology to give to someone unfamiliar with the genre.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 24, 2016 10:20:09 GMT
What is Chambers doing in there? He was an American, and "The Yellow Sign" is not a ghost story.
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Post by ropardoe on Sept 24, 2016 14:03:12 GMT
What is Chambers doing in there? He was an American, and "The Yellow Sign" is not a ghost story. Er, Ambrose Bierce and Henry James were American too!
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Post by ropardoe on Sept 24, 2016 14:49:24 GMT
What is Chambers doing in there? He was an American, and "The Yellow Sign" is not a ghost story. Er, Ambrose Bierce and Henry James were American too! And Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, of course. That being the case, it might have been better to put "Nineteenth-Century" rather than "Victorian" in the subtitle of the book.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 24, 2016 15:08:39 GMT
I'm American, and it is very common in the US to refer to things of the later 19th century (especially post Civil War, after 1865) as Victorian. In addition, I believe all three of the authors mentioned had their works printed in British periodicals or anthologies of the era. It is actually difficult for me to think of Henry James, in particular, as "really" American because his aesthetic and, perhaps, spiritual orientation was so decisively set towards Britain and, to some degree, the Continent.
It would be interesting for someone to do a collection of tales and poems about Death Coaches and the like in folklore, fantasy, and weird fiction. I can think of several examples offhand. I found one last year reading through a collection of Le Fanu's more obscure works; I think it was derived from a local tale that was in the gray region between folk lore and actual reminiscence. Appropriately gray because the Sidhe or Fair Folk were involved, and the spectral coach was of their realm--a realm often described in Scottish and Irish folklore as belonging coterminously to the Sidhe and the dead.
H.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 24, 2016 15:10:09 GMT
Funny... I just noticed after writing the above that the little phrase after my handle here has changed to "Devil's Coach Horse."
And the air has an autumnal crispness this a.m....
H.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 24, 2016 16:02:33 GMT
What is Chambers doing in there? He was an American, and "The Yellow Sign" is not a ghost story. Er, Ambrose Bierce and Henry James were American too! Indeed! So they, along with Wilkins Freeman, fail one of the criteria. Chambers fails both.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 24, 2016 16:08:45 GMT
I'm American, and it is very common in the US to refer to things of the later 19th century (especially post Civil War, after 1865) as Victorian. And that is almost appropriate, except for a tiny little episode known as the American Revolution.
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Post by ropardoe on Sept 24, 2016 17:44:54 GMT
I'm American, and it is very common in the US to refer to things of the later 19th century (especially post Civil War, after 1865) as Victorian. In addition, I believe all three of the authors mentioned had their works printed in British periodicals or anthologies of the era. It is actually difficult for me to think of Henry James, in particular, as "really" American because his aesthetic and, perhaps, spiritual orientation was so decisively set towards Britain and, to some degree, the Continent. It would be interesting for someone to do a collection of tales and poems about Death Coaches and the like in folklore, fantasy, and weird fiction. I can think of several examples offhand. I found one last year reading through a collection of Le Fanu's more obscure works; I think it was derived from a local tale that was in the gray region between folk lore and actual reminiscence. Appropriately gray because the Sidhe or Fair Folk were involved, and the spectral coach was of their realm--a realm often described in Scottish and Irish folklore as belonging coterminously to the Sidhe and the dead. H. You're quite right, of course, about the use of "Victorian" in the USA (I've used it myself in the latest Ghosts & Scholars in relation to those lovely San Francisco row houses). it's just that I thought it might be clearer to say "Nineteenth Century". You're also right about Henry James, but Ambrose Bierce was as American as they come (even if he didn't die in the USA!). Is the Le Fanu story you refer to "The Child that Went with the Fairies"? I love the mysterious coach scene in that - so strange, so magical, so sinister...!
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Post by helrunar on Sept 24, 2016 19:47:27 GMT
ROPardoe, I think it was indeed "The Child that went with the Faeries." So deliciously uncanny.
LeFanu was THE Master until our own dear Montague came along.
cheers, H.
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Post by ripper on Sept 25, 2016 8:22:11 GMT
Elizabeth Gaskell's 'The Old Nurse's Story' and Amelia Edwards' 'The Phantom Coach' are probably my favourites from this collection. I had read them umpteen times but still enjoy them. Gaskell's tale has a wonderfully creepy atmosphere and those last few lines, though maybe a little melodramatic, really hit home--a lifetime of regret over a rash act of youth, with seemingly no hope of redemption.
There must be more tales which use a premise similar to that of Edwards' 'The Phantom Coach', apart from Le Fanu. I feel sure that I have read several in which the mode of transportation was updated to a motor bus and a train, though authors/titles escape me.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 25, 2016 16:17:43 GMT
The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories edited by Michael Sims (Bloomsbury, 2014) Blurb: Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula's Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity's oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising, often legendary cast, from Charles Dickens and Margaret Oliphant to Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W.F. Harvey. Amelia Edwards' chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell, ("The Old Nurse's Story") and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey's Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Michael Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills. The companion vampire anthology Dracula's Guest (Bloomsbury, 2010) is more of the same. Very attractively produced, compiles all the usual suspects. Funny... I just noticed after writing the above that the little phrase after my handle here has changed to "Devil's Coach Horse." And the air has an autumnal crispness this a.m.... H. Ah. 'Devil's Coach Horse' (in tribute to the imperious Richard Lewis when-beetles-attack nasty) indicates you have reached 100 posts on Vault. Thank you! From memory, it changes to something else when you hit 200, after which nothing, for simple reason we didn't think anybody would wanna commit career suicide by conspicuous association with Vault.
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Post by ripper on Sept 25, 2016 17:47:52 GMT
In Sims' 'Dracula's Guest', there were a few stories that I was unfamiliar with, and I was hoping that 'The Phantom Coach' was going to yield the same. I was a bit disappointed to discover that its contents were so well known.
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Post by ripper on Sept 25, 2016 17:53:05 GMT
I was also a little puzzled to read the description in the blurb describing Wilkins Freeman and Harvey as "forgotten." I took the blurb directly from Amazon as my library loan had no dust jacket.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Sept 27, 2016 13:28:24 GMT
On the more general theme of the uncanny coach, I'm put in mind of such items in films - above all La Maschera del Demonio, but also Nosferatu and (far too little-known) Das Blaue Licht.
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