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Post by dem bones on Feb 12, 2022 10:55:37 GMT
Christopher Philippo [ed.] - The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Vol 5 (Valancourt, Dec. 2021) Christopher Philippo - Introduction
John Gibson Lockhart - Little Willie Bell Thomas Haynes Bayly - The Mistletoe Bough (verse) Amelia B. Edwards - My Brother's Ghost Story Anonymous - Old Hell Shaft John Pitman - Ejected by a Ghost Mrs. S. R. Townshend Mayer - The Netherstone Mystery Florence Marryat - That Awful Face! Howell Davies - Two Christmas Eves Mabel Collins - A Tale of Mystery Phœnix - The Ghosts of the Bards: A Legend of Anglesea Jessie Saxby - Hel-Ya-Water: A Shetland Legend of Yule Time (verse) Barry Pain - The Undying Thing Magister Monensis - The Siren: An Adventure in Manxland Baroness de Bertouch - The Tryst, An Old Yule Legend (verse) Adeline Sergeant - The Mummy Hand: A Story of One Christmas Eve James Skipp Borlase - The Dead Hand: A Tale of a Weird and Awful Christmastide James Skipp Borlase - The Wicked Lady Howard; or, The Coach Made of Dead Men's Bones Huan Mee - The Ghost of the Living: A Christmas Story Harry Grattan - A Christmas Ghost Story Arthur Walter Berry - Woden, the Wild Huntsman (verse) F. G. Grundemann - Squire Humperdinck and the Devil: A Christmas Story for ChildrenBlurb:
It's the most wonderful time of the year - time for more rare ghostly tales of Yuletide terror from Victorian England!
For this fifth Valancourt volume of Christmas ghost stories, editor Christopher Philippo has dug deeper than ever before, delving into the archives of Victorian-era newspapers and magazines from throughout the British Isles to find twenty-one rare texts for the Christmas season - seventeen stories and four poems - most of them never before reprinted.
Featured here are gems by once-popular but now-forgotten 19th-century masters of the supernatural like Amelia Edwards, Barry Pain, and Florence Marryat, alongside contributions by totally obscure authors like James Skipp Borlase, a writer of penny dreadfuls who specialized in lurid Christmas horror stories, and Harry Grattan, who made history by writing the first ghost story recorded by Edison for the phonograph. Also included are an introduction and bonus materials, such as 19th-century news articles and advertisements related to Christmas ghosts.
"I endeavoured to call out; I could not utter a sound. As I gasped and panted, there stole into my nostrils a deadly, terrible, overpowering stench . . . It was the dread odour of decomposing mortality . . . I felt that I must break the spell, or die." - John Pitman, "Ejected by a Ghost"
"It was a coach made of dead men's bones . . . Behind the awful vehicle stood two fleshless skeletons in place of footmen, the driver was a horned and tailed fiend, and the six coal-black steeds that he drove had eyes of fire, and snorted flame from their nostrils as they tore madly along." - James Skipp Borlase, "The Wicked Lady Howard" Duane Parson's The Night Season has renewed my appetite for Gothic-Victorian misery, so time to sample a volume of this latest 'Valentine Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories' (not read Vols I-IV). John Gibson Lockhart - Little Willie Bell: ( The Christmas Box: An Annual Present for Children, Dec. 1827). Ghost of unhappy pale curlytop boy can't rest until the sixpence he denied the church plate is discovered beneath the floorboards and given to the parish poor as intended. John Pitman - Ejected by a Ghost: (Mary E. Braddon [ed.] Belgravia Annual, 1869). Lawyer takes chambers in the Grays Inn Road, promptly moves out again on realisation that property is haunted by ghastly, malodorous ghost of a razor suicide. He survives the ordeal, but is sceptical friend is less fortunate. Harry Grattan - A Christmas Ghost Story : What caused the narrator's hair to turn white at an early age? Shaggy cat vignette, of historic interest as, according to editor, in November 1905, it became possibly the first ( faux) ghost story recorded to disc. Otherwise ... not all that. Thomas Haynes Bayly - The Mistletoe Bough: (1829). Weary of dancing, Lord Lovell's bride takes to her secret hiding place — an forgotten old chest — and that's the last anyone sees of her for several years. ♫ Oh, the mistletoe bough! ♫ I like that the stories are interspersed with snippets from the day's newspapers and periodicals. Same item was published in the Bideford Weekly Gazette, 10 Jan 1899, under uncompromising heading, Stupid Ghost Hoax.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 13, 2022 17:21:59 GMT
Anonymous - Old Hell Shaft: (Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Dec. 1865). During a pit strike, Sangream, reeling from a family tragedy and stricken with typhus, receives a midnight visitor at his sick bed. "Black yourself, and be one of us; jump into Hell Shaft, and be immortal. But you must throw two in first." Next day he waits in the darkness as the supervisor makes his round of the mine ...
Huan Mee - The Ghost of the Living: A Christmas Story: (North Wilts. Herald, 29 Dec. 1905). A Christmas party at Colonel Rupert's country house. When the host complains of his inability to let a property on account of a ghost, it's suggested that young Webster Charrington, Rupert's prospective son in law, might spend a night there to prove his mettle. Webster is adamant he'll not set foot in the place, not even for Ethel. He has yet to recover from that terrible episode while slumming in King's Cross with Jack, a consumptive fellow-artist prone to the darkest moods.
Howell Davies - Two Christmas Eves: (Diprose's Annual, 1885). Happily for us, not just any old December 24ths, but the pair six years apart which destroyed any prospect of future happiness for our narrator, Dr. Hepworth. The first saw the senseless and bloody murder of his cherished soon-to-be-father-in-law, the reverend Dr. Forbes, slain at Cliffside vicarage by unknown hand. In the aftermath, Hepworth marries his sweetheart, the murdered man's daughter, and all is well with the world, until Violet loses their baby. That Christmas she gives him a second Yuletide he'll not forget for the rest of his miserable days. Personal favourite of an otherwise unremarkable selection. Amelia B. Edwards - My Brother's Ghost Story: (All the Year Round, Dec. 1860). Tragedy in the Swiss Alps. Christien Baumann, bluff young craftsman, is returning home across the mountains to wed the incomparably beautiful Marie. He doesn't make it. A ghostly melody, familiar as that played on his musical boxes, alerts fellow-travellers that his body lies dead at the foot of a crevasse. He was only 24 Hours from Kardersteg, only one day away from her arms.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 14, 2022 19:50:55 GMT
Mabel Collins - A Tale of Mystery: (Cardiff Times/ Northampton Mercury, 19 Dec. 1885). "The vampire is a creature we have all met in modified form one time or another; old people draw strength from the young, weak people from the strong. I had seen ordinary everyday instances of this in my life, but I had never come across the actual thing before."
Alaric Gaddeston, brilliant student of philosophy and metaphysics, born leaders of men &Co., falls hopelessly under the enchantment of man-hungry Miss Clothilde Francillon, a deadly psychic sponge! Fearful for his best friend's health, the narrator selflessly makes a play for Clotty, who readily transfers her affections, there being little essence-of-Alaric left to drain. Forewarned is supposedly forearmed, but still both men look doomed until the intervention of an Indian ascetic who happened to be watching on the astral (!). The ethereal prescribes a formula of rice and blood to break the spell.
James Skipp Borlase - The Dead Hand: A Tale of a Weird and Awful Christmastide: (Rugby Advertiser, 15. Dec. 1903). The severed hand of the martyred Father Arrowsmith - hung, drawn and quartered by order of William of Orange for celebrating Holy Mass - is said to possess miraculous healing powers. At time of our story, the sacred relic is kept at Bryn Hall, the ancestral home of Sir Geoffry Wynne, Baronet and Justice of the Peace. Among the servants, nineteen-year-old Mary Morgan. Mary has fallen for a handsome gipsy, Will Bosely, a secret bandit leader with designs on robbing the hall at Christmas. Believing the hands magic will protect him from discovery, Bosely begs Mary to leave it by the window so he can use it to save his "dying sister." Mary innocently complies, and things go badly for her from that night on. Second favourite after Two Christmas Eves.
Baroness de Bertouch - The Tryst, An Old Yule Legend: (Hampshire Telegraph, 24 Dec. 1898). Annual spectral reconstruction of a century old Christmas crime. A knight rides across the glen to meet his secret love at the trysting tree. A traitor lies in ambush. Told in verse.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 16, 2022 10:09:43 GMT
Three of the more entertaining offerings.
Florence Marryat - That Awful Face!: ( Leicester Chronicle, 23 Dec. 1882). "The shepherd's crook is all very well for a while, but it stands no chance against a four-poster bedstead."
The Bishop reluctantly offers the curacy of Sarcalet in Gorehambury to newly-wed Hugh Darrell and wife — we say reluctantly because over ten years, no new incumbent has lasted their two month trial period on account of the resident ghost. No sooner have they moved in than the Reverend, the lovely Bessie, and various domestics are regularly subjected to the back view of this spectral menace — a woman in a shapeless blue dress — which disquieting as it can be, is not unduly frightening. It's when she turns her head their way that the Darrell's realise it's time to pack their bags.
James Skipp Borlase - The Wicked Lady Howard; or, The Coach Made of Dead Men's Bones: (Wicklow People 24 Dec. 1903). Tavistock, Devon, 1643. Violet Fitzroy, belle of the Christmas ball, and Hubert Molyneaux, a low-ranking officer in the Dragoons, are in love. The fly in the ointment is her father, Sir Ralph, who forbids her marrying into poverty. Valuing her inheritance, Violet placates father's wishes, suffers the advances of Lord Howard, the owner of two two great estates. Resenting his rival, Molyneaux, insults him as a cradle-snatcher whereupon Howard challenges him to a duel. The younger man happily accepts, but on his own terms. "I have the honour to inform your lordship, within the hearing of all present, that I intend to kill you during the happiest hour of your life." Returning from the ball, Lord Howard and his now bride-to-be Violet are accosted by the Black Monk of St Mary's Abbey, risen from beneath the soil to dramatically proclaim; "Repent, repent, or both within a year."
Violet duly weds the love-struck old fool, and, the deeds to his fortune and a title legally secured, encourages Molyneaux to make good on his promise. Better for all that she had heeded the cowled skeleton's warning!
Phoenix - The Ghosts of the Bards: A Legend of Anglese: (South Wales Echo, 24 Dec. 1886). A shipwreck on Christmas Eve. Sole survivor, Millie Aintree, "endowed with more beauty than falls to the lot of the majority of human beings," washes ashore on sacred Mona during a snow blizzard. The young woman gamely presses on through woodland until she's caught up by a stern old man who, on hearing her tale of woe, delivers her into the clutches of his vengeful kinsmen, centuries dead Druids and their musicians, burnt alive by the Romans! It's curtains for our heroine, until —
— until the author sacrifices all that good, horrible work to a happy ending.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 17, 2022 9:58:51 GMT
Barry Pain - The Undying Thing: (Black and White, December 1893). "A story which no one should tackle after eating a plum pudding." The ill-used first wife of Sir Edric Vanquerest curses the second with a monster-birth. Her rival dies giving birth, the hideous infant is promptly locked away from sight, but Alice's revenge is only begun. Very well done the editor for locating what is surely this much-anthologised story's first appearance?
Jessie Saxby - Hel-Ya-Water: A Shetland Legend of Yule Time: (Boy's Own Paper, Dec 1886). Yaspard braves a tempest to cross to the haunted isle, here to slay the centuries old raven of ill-omen. He succeeds at a high price. Told in verse.
F. G. Grundemann - Squire Humperdinck and the Devil: A Christmas Story for Children: (Manchester Daily Citizen, 23 Dec. 1913). Serial prankster Chuck and his friends the crows collude to bring the honest farming community the most joyful Christmas day — and all at the expense of a Squire who sold himself to evil — for money. A fairy story unlikely to have met with a favourable response in Tory households.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 18, 2022 7:07:08 GMT
Mrs. S. R. Townshend Mayer - The Netherstowe Mystery *: (Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News, 14. Dec 1878). "My master never dines, sir." Narrator is hired by Mr. De Morgue, the master of Netherstowe Priory, to catalogue the archive and set aside material for a history of the family. While diligently filing papers, he is regularly visited by a mystery girl of seventeen with whom he inevitably falls in love — but who is she? Mrs. White the housekeeper insists there has been no young lady lived here these past past twenty years, not since De Morgue learned of his beloved sister, Adele's affair with a married man and cast her out into a snow blizzard to die. This is her portrait — wasn't she gorgeous? The archivist is incredulous. The girl captured to canvas and she he loves with all his being are surely one and the same! What can it all mean? The seemingly "supernatural" aspect of the mystery is ultimately rationalised but, on this occasion, not to the story's cost.
*. Title is misspent as The Netherstone Mystery in Valancourt Book .... It is The Netherstowe Mystery on original newspaper publication.
Arthur Walter Berry - Woden, the Wild Huntsman: (Tamworth Herald, 23. Dec. 1911). A spectral pack of murderers and suicides ride their skeleton mounts through the winter gale. Told in verse.
Adeline Sergeant - The Mummy Hand: A Story of One Christmas Eve: (Alcester Chronicle, 28. Dec. 1901). Enterprising young journalist Eustace Ormerod travels to Africa to write a series of articles on the lost cities of Egypt. Soon after his arrival in Cairo, Ormerod wins the favour of a Sheik by rescuing his son from the jaws of a crocodile, though the young reporter comes to suspects that the incident was staged, Sheik Mohammed having gained a reputation as "the most thorough-going scoundrel and cut-throat on the Nile." Nevertheless, the Sheik repays his son's dubious "savior" by providing him an opportunity to become the first Englishman to enter the partially buried 'city of the Princes.' In return he requests a modest favour. A Government inspector, M. Bougier, is visiting the camp to seek out pilfered treasure. Perhaps the effendi could see his way to concealing an impossibly valuable ruby ring, and the small, partially unwrapped mummy with the missing finger who owned it?
Magister Monensis - The Siren: An Adventure in Manxland: (Isle of Man Times, 31 Dec. 1898). "A single incautious step might send me headlong over the cliffs or into one of the numerous ravines, to be found, as so many others had been, a mangled and lifeless corpse."
Narrator, lost in a gale as he attempts to reach home for Christmas, is lured from the road and ever deeper into the wilderness by a woman's cry of distress. The fairy wren's cry leads him over a cliff edge ....
An interesting selection for sure. Particularly glad to have met the stories by Howell Davies, S. R. Townshend Mayer, James Skipp Borlase, Florence Marryat, Adeline Sergeant, Phoenix and Magister Monensis, not quite so keen on some of the others, but glad of the opportunity to read them. Christopher Philippo's commentary and the aforementioned news items scattered throughout are other points in Vol 5's favour.
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toff
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 72
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Post by toff on Sept 29, 2022 23:20:35 GMT
Cheers!
In editing volumes four and five I'd made a spreadsheet of all the Christmas Ghost Stories (CGS) that have appeared in other CGS anthologies and then avoided those. I thought there'd be a good chance readers might have already read those by Richard Dalby, British Library, Wimbourne, or others. Over 600 rows in that spreadsheet for 1829-1917 with even more representing later years, but there's a *lot* of repetition. "Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk," one I do like, is in at least eight collections that I'd found.
In the course of working on the books I gathered about 300 stories that, in another spreadsheet, I summarized for my own reference and gave star ratings to mainly based on quality. There were hundreds of others for which I didn't bother doing that much, being too obviously bad. There was some conscious effort at having some diversity of decade, place, style, variety of "ghost" and so forth.
The interpolated matter in volumes four and five I'd found in the course of searching for the stories. I'd found enough that we decided to make use of it; volumes 1-3 don't have anything like that.
That line "My master never dines, sir" and its repeated variations got me too - anticipatory plagiarism of the 1931 Dracula film! Despite elements of humor like that and the name "De Morgue," there's some interesting plotting and characterization, like the big risk taken by inviting the narrator to a rendezvous and an atypical ending compared to the average CGS. Mayer's protagonist seemed like he was set up to be a recurring series character who might repeatedly solve mysteries in spite of himself, but I didn't find others with him. Might try looking again sometime.
The Grattan story, as you noted, was not great as a story. The humor was extremely dated even for 1905, but it was a rare example of an early recorded ghost story with a (now) dead man reading it, had distribution from England to at least the USA and Australia, and it had seemingly never been previously transcribed. A person in the Victorian era would have encountered a lot of humorous and rationalized CGS; they were exceptionally common, but they're not what we've thought present-day readers would care to discover anywhere near as often in an anthology.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 13, 2022 11:35:25 GMT
Good to hear from you, Christopher. Yes, I picked on #5 specifically because so few of the titles were familiar to me. So how many stories did you come up with in all (including the "obviously bad" ones) before whittling them down? Any plans for a Vol. 6?
Thanks for registering!
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toff
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 72
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Post by toff on Oct 13, 2022 15:14:00 GMT
It's hard to be sure of an exact total. I've kept a number of spreadsheets, but not everything made it into them. search hits (mix of things that included stories, poems, reviews, novels, news, plays, etc.): 479 Victorian Christmas ghost story anthologies: 802+ rows (many duplicates, given inclusion of same stories in multiple anthologies) Victorian Christmas ghost poems: 91 unused Victorian Christmas ghost stories summarized, rated: 335 (though I have more to add to it) I might make that Victorian Christmas ghost story anthologies list public at some point, and maybe it would shame people about continually reusing stories. I noticed there's another publisher putting out a VCGS collection this year that consists almost entirely of stories taken from previously published Victorian Christmas ghost story anthologies. The two exceptions are one of the stories Johnny Mains initially announced here for his Halloween & Christmas anthology but that he didn't end up using, and one that Melissa Edmundson included in a GS (not Christmas) anthology that was then copied onto a Christmas blog. Thus the editor apparently didn't do any original research at all! That's only a short step up from those numerous bot-like e-artnow digital collections. I feel relatively confident predicting a Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories vol. 6 by someone, sometime, even though this year it's something a little different, The Shrieking Skull & Other Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by James Skipp Borlase. Despite all I've found, I'm not sure I would have enough personally for another volume in the standard *series* unless opportunities for other methods of searching arose, though I certainly have a number of good ones. I do have more than enough for a volume of humorous Christmas ghost stories and poems. I'm not sure if that would necessarily have a large enough audience. I also have enough—only just—for a volume of world Christmas ghost stories and poems. The pickings are slimmer though, not allowing for much winnowing down to only the best. That's just of works that had been translated into English in the Victorian period though, or that are in German and short enough that I could manage them. If others in foreign languages were sought out and newly translated, then there could be enough. I'd also found a serialized Victorian Christmas novel that's never been republished and might do something with that at some point.
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Post by jamesdoig on Oct 14, 2022 21:26:07 GMT
I also have enough—only just—for a volume of world Christmas ghost stories and poems. The pickings are slimmer though, not allowing for much winnowing down to only the best. That's just of works that had been translated into English in the Victorian period though, or that are in German and short enough that I could manage them. If others in foreign languages were sought out and newly translated, then there could be enough. That would be good to see in print, as would all your lists and and spreadsheets - an amazing amount of work! Interesting that there are foreign language Xmas ghost stories - does it mean the English tradition was taken up oversees, or were their similar traditions in other countries?
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toff
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 72
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Post by toff on Oct 15, 2022 19:30:08 GMT
I think perhaps both. There's elements of the supernatural, the devilish, and the violent in the Bible, Apocrypha, art, carols pertaining to events from the Annunciation through the Flight into Egypt, across national/cultural lines. (I touched on some thoughts about that in the introductions to the collections I've done for Valancourt, but would need to do an article or non-fiction book to treat the subject in greater depth.) The same with respect to the traditions about St. Nicholas and the butchered children/scholars. And despite Christmas ghost stories obviously connecting to Christianity, there's instances of interesting stretches across religion and freethought too. The overlapping subject of fireside/winter tales I think are a natural development anywhere, anytime there are people gathered for warmth, staving off the dark and/or cold. Aside from that, Victorian times did have a number of talented polyglots, and poems and stories in translation by professionals and amateurs were not uncommon in newspapers and journals. Sometimes credited, sometimes not. In the introduction to this year's anthology I referenced Les Mystères de Paris by Eugène Sue (and adaptations) and Le Juif polonais by Émile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian. One of Borlase's stories I think is significantly indebted to one or both of those. Oct 14, 2022 17:26:07 GMT -4 jamesdoig said:
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toff
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 72
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Post by toff on Dec 22, 2022 21:50:18 GMT
I might make those spreadsheets available in some form at some point next year. Going through my Christmas folder (and my Downloads folder!) I find that there's quite a lot of stories I'd identified but not entered into a spreadsheet and assessed yet, so I should get working on that. I had tried to avoid downloading anything that was obviously junk, so there could be many things of interest there still.
Any particular subgenre of Christmas ghost story/weird tale I should keep an eye out for? Will be looking for ones incorporating panto/burlesque/theatre in some way, for sure.
Would be interested to learn what people thought of other volumes in the series (mine or others'). Some of the reviews online (Goodreads, retailers') are so unspecific about what they do or don't like in them, when constructive criticism really could help editors' (mine or others) determinations.
Poetry isn't terribly popular with most readers, but there is SO MUCH OF IT in the Victorian era, and such a bunch of of the Christmas ghost poetry genuinely amusing, interesting, ghoulish, etc. that I hate to cast it aside after finding it. Perhaps that stuff I'll self-publish so it's collected out there for those who are curious about it.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 24, 2022 13:01:23 GMT
Hi Christopher. Five is the only one I have just now, chosen primarily because I was unfamiliar with so much of the material - it came down to a choice between this and vol. 4 as to which to sample, and the relative lack of poetry swung the deal. I certainly hope to try another couple from the series, as they all appeal. Have been enjoying the Christmas-orientated volumes of Alastair Gunn's Wimbourne Victorian Ghost Stories, too.
Would love to see a Panto-burlesque-theatre themed selection!
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toff
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 72
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Post by toff on Dec 24, 2022 15:21:07 GMT
Borrow by inter-library loan, maybe?
Gunn digs deep! I haven't had time to read his collections much as to quality; I mainly tracked them so I wouldn't duplicate.
Vol. 4 still has more short stories than many CGS anthologies, despite the poetry. The poems aren't a large percentage of the page count either.
The poetry came about partly because I'd been interested to learn if there were other songs that mentioned the CGS tradition like "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" or that even embodied the tradition, and partly because one can't honestly look at the Victorian period and ignore poetry: it was everywhere. (Same with Christmas: what would it be without carols and songs, reading "The Night Before Christmas," etc.?) It also wasn't ground covered much by earlier anthologies:
CG:A Christmas Ghosts: An Anthology 1978 Manley and Gogo Lewis Seon Doubleday CS:GSFS Christmas Spirits: Ghost Stories Of The Festive Season 1983 Haining Peter Kimber TFoC Twelve Frights of Christmas 1986 Asimov Isaac Avon Books CG Christmas Ghosts 1987 Cramer & David G. Hartwell Kathryn Arbor House GfC Ghosts for Christmas 1988 Dalby Richard ChfC Chillers for Christmas 1989 Dalby Richard SoC Spirits of Christmas: Twenty Other-Worldly Tales 1989 Cramer & Hartwell Richard Wynwood Press MfC Mystery for Christmas 1990 Dalby Richard CrfC Crime for Christmas 1991 Dalby Richard HfC Horror for Christmas 1992 Dalby Richard VGS:OA Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology [not specifically Xmas yet many Xmas-published stories] 1993 Cox Michael Oxford University Press SfC Shivers for Christmas 1995 Dalby Richard FBCGS Folio Book of Christmas Ghost Stories 2005 Cambridge University Press GoCP Ghosts of Christmas Past: Classic Christmas Stories 2008 Hopper Robert M. Doublethumb Press BH Black Heath Winter Ghosts: Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas 2014 1 Black Heath Editions BH More Winter Ghosts: A Further Collection of Classic Christmas Ghost Stories 2014 2 Black Heath Editions WNC: LBCGS Winter Night Classics: Literature’s Best Christmas Ghost Stories 2015 Kellermeyer M. Grant Createspace BH Spectres in the Snow: A Third Collection of Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas 2016 3 Black Heath Editions VCGS Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories 2016 Moore Tara 1 Valancourt Books WBVGC Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories 2016 Gunn Alastair 2 Wimbourne Books CGS:STtRaC Classic Ghost Stories: Spooky Tales to Read at Christmas 2017 Vintage FGSCE Fireside Ghost Stories for Christmas Eve: An Anthology of Winter Horror Stories 2017 Kellermeyer M. Grant Createspace GT: SCSVA Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age 2017 Bragg Bill Chronicle Books LEO1 First Leonaur Christmas Book of Great Ghost Stories 2017 Hetherington Eunice 1 Leonaur LEO2 Second Leonaur Christmas Book of Great Ghost Stories 2017 Hetherington Eunice 2 Leonaur VCGS Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories 2017 Grove Allen 2 Valancourt Books WBVGC Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories 2017 Gunn Alastair 7 Wimbourne Books BH Ghostly Winter Tales: A Fourth Collection of Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas 2018 4 Black Heath Editions BH Weird Winter Tales: A Fifth Collection of Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas 2018 5 Black Heath Editions VCGS Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories 2018 Stern Simon 3 Valancourt Books WBVGS Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories 2018 Gunn Alastair 12 Wimbourne Books GSfC Ghost Stories for Christmas 2019 Shadowridge Press RtDaHaC Remember the Dead at Halloween and Christmas 2019 Mains Johnny Black Shuck Books SotS:CH Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings 2019 Kirk Tanya 1 British Library WBVGC Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories 2019 Gunn Alastair 16 Wimbourne Books CT Chill Tidings: Dark Tales of the Christmas Season 2020 Kirk Tanya 2 British Library
I was happy to break some ground. The poetry I included generally doesn't have the traits many people most dislike about poetry: awkward line readings, unclear meaning, epic length. To those who complain that poems don't tell stories, well. Both eggheads and pre-literate societies would agree that they do.
7 • Introduction (The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Volume Four) • essay by Christopher Philippo 21 • The Green Huntsman • (1841) • short story by Joseph Holt Ingraham 40 • Burt Pringle and the "Bellesnickle" • (1853) • short story by Bill Bramble 46 • Worse Than a Ghost Story • (1856) • short story by Anonymous 57 • The Christmas Ghost • (1877) • short story by Lucy A. Randall 67 • The Frozen Husband • (1869) • short story by Frank Ibberson Jervis 75 • A Sworn Statement • (1881) • short story by Emma Frances Dawson 86 • The Snow Flower of the Sierras • (1884) • short story by Anonymous 93 • The Devil's Christmas • (1885) • short story by Julian Hawthorne 105 • Harlakenden's Christmas • (1887) • poem by Thomas Wentworth Higginson 109 • The Ghostly Christmas Gift • (1887) • short story by F. H. Brunell 119 • The Blizzard • (1888) • short story by Robert Barr [as by Luke Sharp (1849)] 127 • Warned by the Wire • (1895) • short story by Louis Glass 132 • Poor Jack • (1892) • poem by H. C. Dodge 134 • Christmas Wolves • (1898) • short story by P.-B. Gheusi [as by Pierre-Bartélemy Gheusi] 143 • The Werwolves • (1898) • short story by Henry Beaugrand 157 • The Haunted Oak • (1900) • poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar 160 • The Anarchist's Christmas • (1901) • poem by Anonymous 162 • Camel Bells • (1903) • short story by Hezekiah Butterworth 183 • The Ravings • (1903) • poem by Anonymous 186 • Out of the Depths • (1904) • short story by Robert W. Chambers 198 • Old Nick and Saint Nick • (1906) • poem by Frank Irwin 201 • The Cremation of Sam McGee • (1907) • poem by Robert W. Service 206 • Xmas • (1908) • poem by Amorel Sterne 209 • A Cubist Christmas • (1913) • poem by Kate Masterson 211 • Desuetude: A Ghost Story • (1914) • short story by Anonymous 213 • The Christmas Ghost • (1914) • short story by Anna Alice Chapin 222 • Merry Christmas • (1917) • short story by Stephen Leacock
A couple of my poem intros, with one of the author's own notes bracketed:
"Harlakenden's Christmas" Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), was an abolitionist, women’s rights activist, financial backer of John Brown, leader of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers black regi- ment during the Civil War, and correspondent of, and co-editor for, Emily Dickinson. The ghost ship of the poem was the Countess Augusta, and was in fact wrecked in 1738. [One of the best known traditions of our Atlantic coast is that of the “Palatine Light,” popularly associated with the wreck, off Block Island in 1720, of a ship bearing emigrants from the German Palatinates. The light is reported as appearing at irregular intervals for more than a century, and was last seen in 1832. Its appearance is minutely described by an eye witness, a resident physician, who saw it December 20, 1810. See Sheffield’s “Block Island,” p. 42.]
"Poor Jack" Herwick C. Dodge (1847-1922) was the nephew of Mary Mapes Dodge, a woman best known as the founder and editor (1873-1905) of the children’s journal St. Nicholas and author of Hans Brinker, or, The Silver Skates. Though he never had a book of his own, he wrote hundreds of poems for newspapers and was particularly known for his shape poems. Most of what he wrote was funny or sentimental, or at times didactic or political; this poem’s demonic toy from 1892 was an exception.
The other poems: "The Haunted Oak" and "Xmas" were both by African-Americans; like poetry, a group also underrepresented in CGS anthologies prior to mine. Both pertain to more real-horror rather than art-horror.
"The Ravings": from a shipboard newspaper, printed in the Arctic, modeled on Poe's "The Raven"
"The Anarchist's Christmas": a murderous Santa Claus
"Saint Nick and Old Nick": The Devil steals Christmas in rhyme, long before Bobby "Boris" Pickett's monsters, the Grinch, or Jack Skellington did so, likewise in rhyme
"The Cremation of Sam McGee": I'd thought of it as a fireside tale, it always being recited at the summer camp I'd attended, but it does take place during Advent and Christmastime
"A Cubist Christmas": parodies the art movement; my intro also quotes a 1930s Surrealist Christmas card and mentions the ones designed by Dali for Hallmark in the 1940s
I don't regret their inclusion: they're all interesting, weird, horrific, and/or fun.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 26, 2022 19:50:58 GMT
Thanks for the listing! If you've not already done so, you might like to add Tanya Kirk's Haunters at the Hearth British Library, 2022, and probably Lucy Evans & Tanya Kirk's Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights British Library, 2022. So Haining's 'Christmas Spirits' was only the second Christmas Ghost theme anthology? I'm surprised he restricted himself to just the one, given no shortage of material to select from. Shame Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg never got around to compiling a 100 Vile Little Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories. Borrow by inter-library loan, maybe? The local library was converted to a medical centre during the first Covid lockdown. A poster in the window went up shortly before Christmas with the unexpected and very welcome news that, technical glitches overcome, they hope to reopen during the first week of January, so will try order a couple in then.
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