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Post by lemming13 on Nov 3, 2010 13:42:45 GMT
Until my Kindle, my reading of Wilkie Collins was limited to various anthology reprints of A Terribly Strange Bed, The Moonstone, and The Woman in White, all of which I enjoyed. Sadly, I just finished ploughing through the most tedious pile of tat I ever endured since I had to read D H Lawrence's Sketches from Tuscany for O level Eng. Lit., and Collins was to blame. After Dark sounded like a good bet, but apart from A Terribly Strange Bed (again, with a huge chunk missing in the first archive copy I found), the stories in this deserved obscurity. There's an intro from Collins denying having poached foreign originals, then framing narrative 1 (Leaves from Leah's Diary) about a poor painter forced to give up painting by an eye ailment, whose wife persuades him to dictate stories he has heard from clients to her for publication. Then there's the painter's own framing narrative for his story collection, by which time I was getting really rather bored and skipping. Finally we get to the Terribly Strange Bed, and after that it's all downhill. A Stolen Letter is a run of the mill piece about a blackmailer; Sister Rose is an incredibly long and monotonous romantic piece about a girl whose beloved little sister marries an evil aristo just before the French Revolution; The Lady of Glenwith Grange is another mawkish melodrama about a woman who marries a fake French nobleman and dies in childbirth on learning of the truth, while producing an 'idiot' child; Gabriel's Marriage is probably the worst of the lot, a stomach-turningly turgid epic about a young Breton's angst over his wedding plans, following a deathbed revelation by Grandpa, and the intervention of a priest on the run; and The Yellow Mask, an Italian melodrama about a priest scheming to balk a young nobleman's plans to marry the girl he loves, so the church can retrieve lands fraudulently stolen by the boy's ancestors. That one could have been a good little thriller if shortened by two-thirds and relieved of a sub-plot which makes no sense and tails off, and skimmed of multiple contrived coincidences. Then we're back to the double frame, and all ends happily ever after. I mean, I like my Gothic and my Victorian pulp, but this stuff makes the death of Little Nell look like The Great Song of Indifference. If I were diabetic I'd have gone hypo from it...
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Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2011 10:59:13 GMT
Tsk, that's the trouble with some people these days. They've no romance in their souls. Truth be told, outside of The Dream Woman and the much ripped-off A Terribly Strange Bed (Gaston LeRoux gave it the full-on Grand Guignol treatment to wildly entertaining effect as The Inn Of Terror), I find his work hard going, and he's maybe best read sparingly. Inspired by lem's post, dug out the aforementioned The Lady of Glenwith Grange and, in keeping with the day's popular fiction, it is indeed ever so slightly overwrought. Who could fail to be moved by the plight of the self-centred, spoilt rotten fair Rosamond Welwyn, duped into marriage by Frenchie scoundrel, the bogus Baron Franval, an escaped convict wanted for murder? Small wonder Rosamond goes mad, gives birth to a simpleton and dies within three days of so shocking a revelation! Collins does trowel it on a bit thick at times - "If 'idiot' did not sound like a mocking word, however tenderly and pityingly one may wish to utter it, I should tell you that the poor thing has been an idiot from birth"! Not sure I'm up to tackling Gabriel's Marriage so soon afterwards. Wilkie Collins - The Haunted Hotel & Other Strange Stories (Wordsworth Editions, 2006) The Haunted Hotel The Dream Woman Mrs. Zant And Her Ghost A Terribly Strange Bed Miss Jeromette And The Clergyman The Dead Hand Blow Up With The Brig! Nine o'Clock The Devil's Spectacles Blurb Edited and with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.
'Have you ever heard of the fascination of terror?'
This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo converted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale.
The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.Don't have a copy of either, but I'm guessing the contents of the recently reissued The Haunted Hotel & Other Stories are identical to those in the 2006 Wordsworth, in which case it's a surprise that Mad Monkton didn't make the cut as it's among his better supernatural tales, albeit one that overstay it's welcome by around twenty-five pages. In keeping with the miserable family prophesy, Monkton dies in an Italian lunatic asylum. Now he won't quit haunting his nephew, Alfred, until his bones are safely interred in the family vault at Wincott Abbey. Problem is, his corpse has been lost at sea. Mrs Zant and the Ghost, yet another woman-in-peril melodrama, is redeemed by its nasty undercurrent of sexual tension, as the villainous John Zant sets out to have it off with his dead brother's attractive young widow by any means necessary.
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julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Jan 9, 2011 19:55:18 GMT
I haven't tried any of his horror (well, not 100% sure - the terribly strange bed I know I've come across somewhere, but not sure whose version - or whether it was just in a Hammer film somewhere), but I found Collin's Moonstone to be hilarious. Is he funny in his horror stories too?
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Post by dem bones on Jan 10, 2011 14:52:22 GMT
i've never read Moonstone so i'm afraid i can't compare. from my limited experience of his work, A Terribly Strange Bed is the closest he comes to a horror story (i'm sure you'd have great fun adapting it), the rest incline more toward mystery with a dash of 'supernatural' terror here and there. as with much of the day's melodrama/ sensationalist fiction, read a century after the event they can be very funny in ways i'm not at all sure Collins & Co. intended - see lemmy's super post which kicks off this thread.
A Terribly Strange Bed: Faulkner, a young English traveller, is winning heavily in a seedy Parisian gambling den. His sensible companion urges him to quit, but our man knows a winning streak when he sees it and tells his friend to do one, which he does. No sooner has the wiser party headed back to their hotel than Faulkner is waylaid by an ancient soldier ("he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw - even in France") who gets him drunk on the industrial strength house champagne and encourages him to break the bank. Once the croupier has shooed everyone else off back to their slums, the kindly veteran offers Faulkner some advice, namely that he should stay the night as some of the den's regulars are doubtless lying in wait for him even now! A cup of drugged coffee settles the issue, and the Englishmen is helped upstairs to sprawl out on the bed. The canopy slowly descends ...
Unusually for Collins, when he says "the end is soon told", in this instance it really is - just when he could have done with dragging it out a bit more! it's still as powerful a story as i've read of his and deserving of its "classic" status, even if i can't help thinking The Iron Shroud for squeamish people.
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Post by lemming13 on Jan 12, 2011 11:31:46 GMT
I quite liked The Moonstone; to me it reads like a Victorian cross-breeding experiment between the Gothic novel and the sort of pulp trash adventure I love. Would have been awesome if he had introduced a Fu Manchu style villain lurking in the shadows. You're right, dem, he does rush the end of Terribly Strange Bed. But with a lot of his other stuff, you don't half wish the end was told that soon.
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julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Jan 12, 2011 19:16:40 GMT
What I loved in the moonstone was the really humorous social satire - the frightfully preachy evangelical old maid who takes the narrative fro a while, and you just want to punch in the face (which was apparently written while he was ill and being visited by that kind of people a lot), and the bit with the burst buzzard will never fail to make me crack up.
[Hmm... Maybe I should do a moonstone episode, much like I recently did a Cymbeline one. Ooh, frightful.]
Sorry - tangent.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 28, 2012 8:29:50 GMT
Robert Ashley & Herbert Van Thal (ed.s) - Wilkie Collins: Tales Of Suspense (Folio Society, 1954) Introduction
A Terribly Strange Bed A Stolen Letter The Lady Of Glenwith Grange The Dream Woman The Dead Hand Fauntleroy "Blow Up The Brig!" Mr. Lepel And The Housekeeper Miss Bertha And The Yankee Mr. Policeman And The Cook Anne Scott "I was seized with a fit of giddiness" A Terribly Strange Bed Don't usually go in for posh books, but the dealer in Spitalfields Market was only asking £1 and this scaled down version of what would become Tales Of Mystery & Supernatural (Dover, 1972) seemed worth that for Anne Scott's eight lovely lithograph's alone. The four page introduction is credited to both Ashley and Van Thal, but doesn't really amount to much. "In appearance, a short, podgy man, near-sighted and well-bearded, Wilkie Collins possessed a great sense of fun, and was extremely good company. The details of his private life are sparse even in this age of probing into the lives of the famous, for he successfully covered up a great deal about himself." Tales Of Mystery & Supernatural, this time credited to Van Thal alone, adds Mad Monkton and The Bitter Bit, but sadly, no Gabrielle's Wedding (see Lemmy's definitive review up top of this thread) Anne Scott "His eyes followed her to the door" Mr. Lepel And The Housekeeper
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 28, 2012 10:28:47 GMT
Robert Ashley & Herbert Van Thal (ed.s) - Wilkie Collins: Tales Of Suspense (Folio Society, 1954) Talking of Wilkie Collins, one of my few lucky breaks in book collecting was finding this signed copy of Poor Miss Finch for $30 at the Lifeline bookfair a few years ago. It was sold at the auction of Collins' library after he died and somehow ended up at a charity bookfair in Canberra!
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Post by killercrab on Nov 29, 2012 2:25:27 GMT
Nice art.
KC
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Post by weirdmonger on May 31, 2021 5:36:04 GMT
MAD MONKTON by William Wilkie Collins Chapter 1 “Others had heard odd noises in the uninhabited parts of the Abbey, had looked up, and had seen him forcing open the old windows, as if to let light and air into rooms supposed to have been shut close for years and years;” …Alfred Monkton, that is, heir to the family with a hereditary madness, betrothed to a ‘grasping’ Widow Emslie’s daughter Ada, and the narrator’s hearsay evidence, as son of his father who died a widower, another one who died from infection in his lungs outwards! The narrator’s Father as legal guardian of Ada. Hearsay evidence, too, of monks’ ghosts in the Abbey…Ada off on the continent with her sickliness, meantime. The scene is thus duly set for this novelette within the foregoing, impinging context of this whole book?* Chapters 2 & 3 “…there were times when he would suddenly look away from my face, now on one side of me, now on the other, but always where there was nothing to see.” …Alfred ‘Mad’ Monkton, that is, as seen through the eyes of the narrator who, despite what he says, I shall deem, for the time being, an unreliable narrator. Only instinct, on my part, but what I believe. He sees Alfred as a bit ‘effeminate’, while he listens to Alfred’s now detailed, documented ‘mad’ or pointless obsession in Naples with finding his uncle’s corpse following a highly eccentric duel, all such duels being frowned on by the Pope. Alfred even transports an empty leaden coffin around with him to take his uncle when found. Alfred has postponed his marriage to the mainly recovered Ada in order to fulfil his quest, we are told. And much else, that I cannot really cover here in my review of this ‘fiction’. All very disturbing, though, with still tantalising implications, such as the reason for artists and painters to accompany the duelling party. Chapter 4 For fear of spoilers, I will not reveal Alfred’s ‘rationale’ for his obsessive quest with an empty coffin, nor explicate his described experiences of being haunted at the Abbey that seemed to confirm a certain familial prophecy. Nor Alfred’s thoughts on Ada, and how this prophecy affects them both, Nor the striking, arguably believable dilemma that faces the narrator. I will just show you one example of the ingredients in such a haunting, as in the example of text above.* Just one example of much powerful writing in this chapter by the author of the Moonstone… Chapter 5 “Closeness? — Surely it was something more than that. The air was even more distasteful to my nostrils than to my lungs. There was some faint, indescribable smell loading it —“ The narrator tells us, and I somehow do believe him, of his own journey, while Alfred rests from the quest. A journey to a nearby convent of Capuchin monks, as in MONKton, I guess, monks most absurdly lusting after his snuff! We follow him over the evocatively conjured Italian terrain of wild seclusion, and see, with him, what he discovers in one of the convent’s outhouses, this being one of those sublime horror fiction genre moments that enthusiasts for such literature should never avoid. It is worth daring! Especially with the accompanying tripartite crosscurrents of the Roman Catholic religion (foreshadowed earlier in this novelette), and of Duellism, and of our beliefs in ghosts… I personally thank Aickman for drawing this work to my attention. It feels as it must be an influence on his own work. And I still have one chapter yet to read! “The very cross opposite the entrance-gate, with a shocking life sized figure in wood nailed to it, was so beset at the base with crawling creatures, and looked so slimy, green, and rotten all the way up…” sic ‘Duellism’ Chapter 6 “The empty place will now remain empty for ever…” Like memory itself, even as you grow older before memory’s final resting place. That memory in the image above the school story, when youth started their memories. And I recall the old Capuchin monk in the previous chapter was worried he had lost his memory. And now Alfred’s own memory loss as a sort of false healing of his madness. And Ada’s final line is devoted to faith in her memory to the dead she lost. Never meeting the narrator again. The narrator’s own tussling with his own depression when earlier crossing the seas with the leaden coffin, in a craft that was beset by a storm, and the so-called ‘marble statue’ is sort of aborted to breaking waters, following the superstitious crew’s misgivings. The explicit “series of striking coincidences” that the narrator witnessed now almost makes me lose my own memory as to why I doubted the narrator’s reliability in the first place. All of this being a coda to my whole review, a pack of cards each one the Queen of Spades. * Full context of this review here: dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/the-4th-fontana-book-of-great-ghost-stories-edited-by-robert-aickman/#comment-21622
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Post by dem bones on Oct 15, 2022 17:26:41 GMT
Until my Kindle, my reading of Wilkie Collins was limited to various anthology reprints of A Terribly Strange Bed, The Moonstone, and The Woman in White, all of which I enjoyed. Sadly, I just finished ploughing through the most tedious pile of tat I ever endured since I had to read D H Lawrence's Sketches from Tuscany for O level Eng. Lit., and Collins was to blame. After Dark sounded like a good bet, but apart from A Terribly Strange Bed (again, with a huge chunk missing in the first archive copy I found), the stories in this deserved obscurity. There's an intro from Collins denying having poached foreign originals, then framing narrative 1 (Leaves from Leah's Diary) about a poor painter forced to give up painting by an eye ailment, whose wife persuades him to dictate stories he has heard from clients to her for publication. Then there's the painter's own framing narrative for his story collection, by which time I was getting really rather bored and skipping. Finally we get to the Terribly Strange Bed, and after that it's all downhill. A Stolen Letter is a run of the mill piece about a blackmailer; Sister Rose is an incredibly long and monotonous romantic piece about a girl whose beloved little sister marries an evil aristo just before the French Revolution; The Lady of Glenwith Grange is another mawkish melodrama about a woman who marries a fake French nobleman and dies in childbirth on learning of the truth, while producing an 'idiot' child; Gabriel's Marriage is probably the worst of the lot, a stomach-turningly turgid epic about a young Breton's angst over his wedding plans, following a deathbed revelation by Grandpa, and the intervention of a priest on the run; and The Yellow Mask, an Italian melodrama about a priest scheming to balk a young nobleman's plans to marry the girl he loves, so the church can retrieve lands fraudulently stolen by the boy's ancestors. That one could have been a good little thriller if shortened by two-thirds and relieved of a sub-plot which makes no sense and tails off, and skimmed of multiple contrived coincidences. Then we're back to the double frame, and all ends happily ever after. I mean, I like my Gothic and my Victorian pulp, but this stuff makes the death of Little Nell look like The Great Song of Indifference. If I were diabetic I'd have gone hypo from it... In a similar vein. According to David Stuart Davies, Collins was unhappy with this "gruesome" story and refused to see it published in book form; "It was probably the tone and subject-matter of the story, so different from Collins' usual style, which dissatisfied him." This is most likely true, though I'd prefer he was annoyed at sacrificing a decent horror story to yet another bastard happy ending. Wilkie Collins - The Devil's Spectacles: ( The Spirit of the Times, 20 Dec. 1879, as The Magic Spectacles). " ... they’ll help you to see more than you bargain for. Look through them at your fellow mortals, and you’ll see the inmost thoughts of their hearts as plain as I do, and, considering your nature, Septimus, that will drop you even below the level of a wolf." Begins with the deathbed confession of unpopular lodge keeper Septimus Notman, one-time Artic explorer, who, on one such expedition, was driven to dine on the boatswain's mate to fend off starvation. The Devil was so impressed by Notman's resourcefulness that he delivered our reluctant cannibal to safety, gifting him a pair of special spectacles as a keepsake. With his last breath, Notman hands them to his late master's son, Alfred, our narrator, who finds them especially helpful in resolving his love life. Will he go against dear Mater's wishes to wed his fiancée? Or should he jilt penniless Cecilia in favour of Ma's favourite niece, seventeen-year-old Zilla of the knock-out looks and massive dowry? This turned up at the market a while back for 50p. Wilkie Collins: The Complete Shorter Fiction (Robinson, 1995: Ed. Julian Thompson) 'Fine art Photographic Library' Introduction A Note on the Texts
The Last Stage Coachman The Twin Sisters A Passage in the Life of Perugino Potts Mad Monkton A Terribly Strange Bed Nine o'Clock! Gabriel's Letter A Stolen Letter The Dream Woman The Lady of Glenwith Grange Anne Rodway The Black Cottage The Family Secret A Fair Penitant The Dead Hand A Plot in Private Life The Biter Bit The Poisoned Meal Fauntleroy The Parson's Scruple "Blow Up The Brig!" Memoirs of the Adopted Son The Cauldron of Oil The Fatal Cradle John Jago's Ghost The Frozen Deep A Mad Marriage Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman Mr. Captain and the Nymph Mr. Percy and the Prophet Miss Bertha And The Yankee Miss Mina and the Groom Mr. Marmaduke and the Minister Mrs. Zant and her Ghost The Devil's Spectacles Mr. Policeman and the Cook Mr. Cosway and the Landlady Miss Morris and the Stranger Fie! Fie! or, The Fair Physician Mr. Lismore and the Widow Love's Random Shot Mr. Lepel and the Housekeeper Mr. Medhurst and the Princess The Poetry Did It A Sad Death and Brave Life Farmer Fairweather Miss Dulane and My Lord The First Officer's ConfessionBlurb: William 'Wilkie' Collins, author of the perennial favourites The Moonstone and The Woman in White, friend and adviser to Charles Dickens and acclaimed as the grandfather of the modern detective story, was one of the nineteenth century's most popular authors. Indeed, Dickens described him as 'the writer who would come ahead of all the field'. He was born in London in 1824, the son of a landscape painter. After a private education and two years in Italy, he trained in the law and began to practise in 1851. However he also became friends with Charles Dickens and quickly swapped his legal wig for the quill pen of literature. He became probably the first writer in English fiction to deal with the business of crime and detection, and as a result achieved great popularity in his lifetime. Many of his novels were published in Dickens' periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round including The Woman in White and The Moonstone. In his shorter fiction, Collins retains all the skill and energy of his novels. He had a mastery of plot that even Dickens admired, and all the delicacy in drawing character that one associates with this fertile period of literature.
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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 15, 2022 18:50:06 GMT
MAD MONKTON is in the 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, as chosen by Aickman.
“The very cross opposite the entrance-gate, with a shocking life sized figure in wood nailed to it, was so beset at the base with crawling creatures, and looked so slimy, green, and rotten all the way up…”
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