|
Post by dem bones on Jan 24, 2009 20:35:12 GMT
Peter Haining (ed) - The Shilling Shockers: Stories Of Terror From The Gothic Bluebooks (Gollancz, 1978: Gargoyles Head Press 1996) Introduction - Peter Haining
Isaac Crookenden - The Vindictive Monk: Or, The Fatal Ring Sarah Wilkinson - The Mysterious Novice: Or, Convent Of The Grey Penitents Dr. Nathan Drake and A. N. Other - Captive Of The Banditti: A Terrific Tale Concluded Anon - The Spectre Mother: Or, The Haunted Tower Anon - The Life And Horrid Adventures Of The Celebrated Dr. Faustus Anon - The Old Tower Of Frankenstein Anon - The Bride Of The Isles: A Tale Founded On The Popular Legend Of The Vampyre Anon - The Lunatic And His Turkey: A Tale Of Witchcraft Anon - The Severed Arm: Or, The Wehr-wolf Of Limousin ‘D’ - Five Hundred Years Hence!
Bibliography Another from Mr. Haining's golden age at Gollancz, wisely republished with the author's full consent by the ever-classy Gothic Society under their much missed Gargoyles Head imprint. In the great scheme of things, the Blue Books followed on from the great Gothic novels of M. G. Lewis, Charles Maturin, Ann Radcliffe and William Beckford whom they plagiarised mercilessly and this collection of proto-pulp melodramas includes early variations on the vampire and werewolf themes and even a rather adorable stab at sci-fi. As ever, lots of innocent heirs and heroines find themselves cast into dungeons at the mercy of some unspeakable relative and every 'Holy' person is to be regarded with the utmost fear.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Nov 13, 2009 8:51:56 GMT
Isaac Crookenden - The Vindictive Monk Or, The Fatal Ring: For twenty years, Signor Calini has raised our hero as his own flesh and blood, but now is the time for the deception to end. Out in his gondola late one night, Calini spotted a bundle on the shore within a foot of the waves. The infant wore a curious ring, engraved with a peculiar name underneath. Calini, having recently lost his own boys, took the child as a substitute son and no-one else is any the wiser. Shortly after this startling revelation, the young man is on his way to meet his intended, the fair Lady Alexa, when he's set upon by rogues and taken to a ruined castle where he's chained up in a dungeon. "Here is your habitation until you resign all pretensions to Lady Alexa!" warns his jailer. This is Sceloni, the vindictive monk of the title, "of a gloomy character, and who was never once seen to smile. He was dependent on a nobleman, and had, from motives of self-interest, engaged to administer his lewd proposition. The nobleman was enamoured of the very same lady our hero loved." With our hero starving in his cell, the nobleman, Holbruzi, is free to pursue Alexa, but she spurns him for the rotter he is so he has his band of inhuman monsters - led by the monk - kidnap her and bring her to his mansion. Still she's having none of it and, when Sceloni picks this inopportune moment to ask for a pay rise, Holbruzi reminds him he's already been paid overmuch for his services. This proves to be Holbruzi's undoing and finally the Monk gets to show some vindictiveness. As rip-offs of The Monk go, this one is pretty weedy and a spot of torture here, some heavy duty grief for Lady Alexa there would have been welcome, but compared to some of the other efforts collected here-in, it's not so bad. At least there's a cunning murder. Did you guess the youth's real father? Anon - The Bride Of The Isles: A Tale Founded On The Popular Legend Of The Vampyre: Miles better! Following his execution (decapitation!) by the public executioner, Oscar Montcalm, the notorious Scottish criminal and murderer, is set loose upon the world again, this time as a vampire. It's quite a complicated business. First he must commandeer the corpse of a man recently slain which is then his to use for a year. To prolong his horrid and diabolical second existence, "Every All-Hallow E'en, he must wed a lovely virgin, and slay her, which done, he is to catch her warm blood and drink it, and from this draught he is renovated for another year, and free to take another shape, and pursue his Satanic course". Should he fail to procure a bride, he'll vanish into nothingness. When the noble young warrior Ruthven, Earl of Marsden, is slain in Flanders, Montcalm seizes his opportunity. He's always had an eye for Ruthven's intended, the fair Lady Margaret, so he returns to the Southern isles to claim her as this year's comely sacrifice. Margaret is pleasantly shocked to see him, even if he is a little pale, having already heard from her father, Lord Ronald, the Baron of the Isles, that Ruthven was slain in battle; the Baron even buried him. As Halloween draws near, the happy couple announce their wedding, but Lord Ronald and Ruthven's loyal comrade Robert are by now convinced that, sad as it is, their friend is dead and this impostor is a vampire! During the ceremony, the Baron loudly proclaims his suspicions and is confined to the tower as a madman. Robert frees him in time to have the marriage ceremony aborted, but now the desperate vampire turns his attentions to Robert's betrothed, Effie, instead. Needless to say, she falls under the spell of his basilisk gaze. When Montcalm makes noises to the effect that he'll pay Robert a tidy sum and provide a pretty girl from his own estate as a transfer fee, she agrees to wed him on the spot. Will Montcalm, after all, enjoy his feast of blood in the bridal chamber? Can no-one stop this lascivious monster? Witchcraft, Black Magic, visions, commune with Goddesses, a thoroughly evil vampyre, scary skeletons and a storming Hammer Horror grand finale - this one has the lot. Anon - The Old Tower Of Frankenstein: Two lovers rendezvous in a castle on the Rhine at midnight despite the maiden's trepidation. The place has a bad reputation because "the spirit of a woman and her children were once sacrificed to the monster and [are] said to haunt the tower, though the creature lay slain by the Baron Frankenstein these many years". The ghost duly appears, the curse is lifted and the murdered woman ascends to heaven. Not exactly a high watermark in Gothic fiction. Anon - The Lunatic And His Turkey: A Tale Of Witchcraft; Could the Americans do any better? Not on this evidence. A dire satire on the credulity of a Deacon and his twenty women parishioners who believe the man with the troubling attachment to his turkey-cock is under a witches spell. He isn't, he's just mad. When they decapitate the turkey that only makes him more miserable as now he's lost his only friend. A physician bleeds him, the Deacon's flock bottle the blood and put it an over, the bottle explodes and an old woman dies the same night. They claim victory, conveniently overlooking the fact that the lunatic is still a lunatic. If you fancy the sound of any of these, most if not all are available as free downloads in the Early Gothic Horror section at Horrormasters incidentally, The Mysterious Novice: Tales of Terror from the Gothic Bluebooks (Apocryphile Press, USA, 2007) Introduction - Peter Haining Not seen a contents list, but same book? probably more to come ....
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2017 20:31:25 GMT
‘D’ - Five Hundred Years Hence!: (The Pocket Magazine, 1818). Breaking news from 2318. Messers Oliver Airbuilder & James Sharpe of Baltimore man an air balloon to the moon to discover a "desolate and comfortless globe" populated by madmen ... world rejoices at discovery of Hardoniensiana, an exciting new indestructible metal .... The rise of the American nation has seen England reduced to a laughably insignificant player in world affairs ... Sorry 'D', you lost me on that last one.
Anon - The Wehr-wolf of Limousin: or, The Severed Arm: Far more convoluted - and doom laden - than I'd (mis) remembered. Count Gaspar de Marcanville is falsely accused of plotting the assassination of his beloved monarch by the treacherous Count de Saintefleur, and banished to the woods of Upper Limousin for his pains. To provide for his wife and the gentle Adele (obligatory beautiful daughter), our unfairly disgraced noble reinvents himself as the finest hunter in the province. But Limousin has long been the haunt of wehr-wolves, and de Marcanville's arrival coincides with an alarming escalation in their attacks on the local community. One night a bloodied stranger staggers into 'The Chevalier Bayard's Arms' clutching a huge paw hacked from one of these terrible creatures. A posse gives chase and the mutilated man-wolf is traced to the château of .... Gaspar de Marcanville! Peter Haining gives his source as "Tales Of Superstition, Dean & Munday, c. 1820". The author is in fact Richard Thomson, and his comically gruesome tragedy was first (?) published as The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin, in Tales of an Antiquary: Chiefly Illustrative of the Manners, Traditions, and Remarkable Localities of Ancient London: Vol 1, Henry Colburn, 1828.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Feb 11, 2017 10:57:19 GMT
Dr. Nathan Drake and A. N. Other - Captive Of The Banditti: A Terrific Tale Concluded: (1801). Lashed to a tree overlooking a bottomless chasm, Henry de Montmorecy can only watch in horror as his two loyal assistants are thrown screaming to their doom! And all because they leapt to the defence of a fair damsel in distress! His gloating captors chortle with unholy glee. "Look," cried a banditto with a fiendlike smile, 'look and anticipate the pleasures of your journey. " Villains! Oh, but it is all too horrible to contemplate! Is there no hope? His captors take an axe to the tree .... Needless to say, by the time A. N. Other takes up the story, Henry has performed an extraordinary feat of escapology, but is not yet out of the woods. Unfortunately, the anonymous author disdains the de Sade/ M. G. Lewis approach in favour of wedding bells, happy ever after & co., but it's pretty tidy up until that point. Resurrected in David Blair's splendid Wordsworth edition, Gothic Short Stories.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Feb 17, 2017 19:54:14 GMT
Anon - The Life And Horrid Adventures Of The Celebrated Dr. Faustus: Wittenberg University. John Faustus, Doctor of Divinity, renounces God, Religion and the Holy Scriptures in favour of the Black Arts, Alchemy, Mumbo Jumbo & Co. FAUSTUS enters into a compact with LUCIFER entitling him to twenty-four years of pretty much everything he asks for (* terms and conditions apply), after which - eternal torment in the fires of Hell! Making the most of his measly span, FAUSTUS devotes his days to travel, prank playing, space exploration, fine-tuning his harem, etc. Most of all, he plots and schemes for a means of avoiding the ghastly tortures reserved him in the fiery pit. The exciting Sci-fi interlude is best - poor old 'D's Five Hundred Years Hence! is absolutely nowhere. A climax straight out of 'Monk' Lewis also goes in author's favour. Anon - The Spectre Mother: Or, The Haunted Tower: Incensed at her son's romantic liaison with little orphan Angela, twenty, the Marchioness di Montmorenci convinces the girl that her future lies behind convent walls. En route to the Mother Superior, Angela Modeni's party are abducted by robbers. Ludorico, the Bandit chief, is well thrilled to bag such a pretty prize - his rank entitles him first dibs - and Angela is only spared a rogering on the intervention of Moresco, Ludorico's ghastly confederate, who offers her deliverance on condition she become his wife. Angela has little option but to agree. They make a break for it that same night. Several hundred miles later, Moresco finds them a gloomy abandoned castle to make home in.
Desperate for money, Moresco advertises his services as a hired assassin. Count Ruvello offers him a commission to murder the fair Julia and child. Julia recently lost her husband on the battlefield. By the terms of her beloved's will, she has inherited a fortune, but should Julia die before the infant is wed, the money passes to the soldier's kinsman, Ruvello. Moresco stabs Julia in her bed, but before he can do the same for baby, the bloody spectre of his victim puts him to flight. The cowardly killer prevails upon Angela, who is innocent of his actions, to raise the child as though it were their own. Angela happily consents.
One night while Moresco is away on mischief, Julia's ghost pays Angela a visit and bids her follow into the underground sepulchre. After a series of encounters with supernatural phenomena, who should she find down there but her lost love, di Montmorenci!
Their joyous reunion heralds dramatic changes in fortune for all the main players. If our Anonymous author were a de Sade or M. G. Lewis, this would be extremely good news for the reader, but tragically, he or she is all too obviously a product of the dreaded Clara Reeve school, and any slim hopes we held for a thoroughly miserable ending are finally dashed when the Pope is alerted to Angela's plight. A lamentable final chapter sees the guilty punished, the virtuous rewarded, everything in the garden rosy, etc.
An interesting anthology, possibly even an important one, but not a particularly riveting read as no one story consistently delivers. If this selection is representative, and the "shockers" really did retail at a shilling a go - you could probably buy a house for less in 1813 - then it's tempting to see them as the true forerunners of today's more "competitively priced" small press "collectables."
|
|
|
Post by Anthony Hogg on Nov 11, 2019 6:16:53 GMT
I'm currently researching an article that cites "Bride of the Isles" from Haining's book, but the author's used the American reprint.
For primary source purposes, would it be ok if someone could provide a scan of the book's title page, intro and the actual story? If not the whole story, I'll suffice with the page range and a scan of the story's first page.
|
|
|
Post by Anthony Hogg on Nov 11, 2019 6:23:36 GMT
Oh, and did you ever clarify if the Mysterious Novice was actually a reprint? Just out of curiousity.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Nov 14, 2019 19:19:24 GMT
Oh, and did you ever clarify if the Mysterious Novice was actually a reprint? Just out of curiousity. I've never seen a copy but would be surprised if it wasn't. As to The Bride of the Isles, it runs from p. 127-151 in the Gollancz edition, Haining's introduction accounting for p.127 and half of p.128. Pretty sure whoever scanned the version posted on Horrormasters (RIP) took it from Haining's book: Attachments:brideoftheisles.pdf (53.42 KB)
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jun 3, 2021 12:23:43 GMT
Sarah Wilkinson - The Mysterious Novice; or, Convent of the Grey Penitents: (F. Hughes, 1810). "Having procured the key, they proceeded to the dungeon, where they found the wretched Constance lying on a miserable mattress, praying for death to relieve her sufferings." Adolphus, Count d'Erfeldt, is sweet on a young novice at the Convent, and confides as much to his dying grandfather, Marquis Sperreth. The Marquis comes over all emotional, insists that Adolphus must put right a terrible wrong of which he is in no small way to blame. As a younger man, the Marquis, a staunch Catholic, was fanatically intolerant toward heretics, aka those of the Protestant faith. His daughter, Lady Vitoria, far less circumspect in her bigotry, did the dirty on her friend, Josephine, by running off with her fiance, the very Protestant Count Kempenfeldt. On learning of this outrage, Sperreth had Kempenfeldt murdered in secret and disowned his now pregnant daughter. A contrite Lady Vitoria gave up her baby girl and joined the convent. She died but recently. Adolphus knew her as the Abbess Ursula. The beautiful young novice, is her daughter, Constance! Hearing all this, Adolphus is now determined to liberate his cousin from the convent, but Abbess Ursula's successor proves gleefully unsympathetic, for she is none other than the embittered Josephine, sworn to make Constance's every hour more miserable than the last! With the help of co-conspirators Father Leopold - a lecherous, conniving Monk - and Sister Clara, "a woman of repulsive manners, artful, penetrating, and apt to put malicious constructions on the most innocent events," Josephine incarcerates Constance in the Convent dungeon then puts it around that the novice has eloped with a lover! For shame! Very entertaining, even if ending confirms that it is essentially a watered down The Monk for softies.
|
|