Skarda & Jaffe - The Evil Image

[dem bones]

Patricia L. Skarda & Nora Crow Jaffe (eds.) - The Evil Image: Two Centuries of Gothic Short Fiction & Poetry (Meridian; New American Library, June 1981)

General Introduction
Critical Studies Of The Gothic

Daniel Defoe - The Apparition Of Mrs. Veal
Dr. John Aikin & Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbould - On the Pleasures To Be Derived From Objects Of Terror: with Sir Bertrand, A Fragment
Dr. John William Polidori - The Vampire: A Tale
George Gordon, Lord Byron - Fragment Of A Novel
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - The Transformation
Sir Walter Scott - Wandering Willie's Tale
Washington Irving - The Spectre Bridegroom
Washington Irving - The Traveller's Tale
Edgar Allan Poe - The Fall Of The House Of Usher
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown
Charles Dickens - The Signal-Man
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Green Tea
Louisa May Alcott - Perilous Play
Henry James - The Ghostly Rental
Robert Louis Stevenson - Markheim
Stephen Crane - The Monster
Montague Rhodes James - The Mezzotint
A. E. Coppard - Arabesque: The Mouse
William Faulkner - A Rose For Emily
Eudora Welty - Clytie
Flannery O' Connor - The River
Stephen King - Suffer The Little Children

Verse

Anne Radcliffe - The Snow Fiend
Anne Radcliffe - December's Eve, Abroad
Anne Radcliffe - December's Eve, At Home
Mary Alcock - A Receipt For Writing A Novel
Matthew Gregory Lewis - Alonzo The Brave And Fair Imogene
Matthew Gregory Lewis - Giles Jollup The Grave, And Brown Sally Green
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Christabel
George Gordon, Lord Byron - Manfred: A Dramatic Poem
John Keats - Isabella, or The Pot Of Basil
Charlotte Bronte - Rochester's Song To Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte - Retrospection
Emily Bronte - R. Alcona To J. Brenzaida
Emily Bronte - No Coward Soul Is Mine
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Sister Helen
Christina Georgina Rossetti - Goblin Market
William Butler Yeats - The Stolen Child
Thomas Hardy - The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy - A Wasting Illness
Anne Sexton - Briar Rose [Sleeping Beauty]

Suggestions For Further Reading In The Gothic Tradition

Blurb:
The dark side of the literary imagination shadows the pages of this fearfully fascinating anthology of over two centuries of Gothic fiction and poetry in England and America. Keyed to an eternal chord of terror deep in the human psyche, these forty selections extend from an eerie ghost story by Daniel Defoe in 1706 through the haunted castles and man-made monsters, vampires and devils, ghouls and goblins, murderers and other embodiments of evil that mark the course of Gothic literature right up to today.

Together they demonstrate the abiding lure of the uncanny for writers of every period and style, and the power it continues to exert upon the modern reader. If you have a hunger for horror, THE EVIL IMAGE is both a perfect volume for shivery sampling, and an inclusive survey of an important and influential tradition

interesting to compare this selection with David Blair's Gothic Short Stories as it features several of the same authors. other than a recent rematch with Rats, it's been some time since i read M. R. James and it's something of a surprise to find he features in both books (Gothic Short Stories dusts off Canon Alberic's Scrapbook) - he's far from the first name that springs to mind when i think 'Gothic'. As far as personal preference goes, it's The Monk influenced/ derivative stuff that does it for me - the Mysteries Of Udolpho school can be a bit too frightfully proper and besides, i'd rather not have my seemingly supernatural occurrences explained away - but there's little of either on offer in the fiction here. there's probably not so much here you don't already have, but where The Evil Image does the business is in the lengthy introductions to each item.