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Post by humgoo on Jun 12, 2021 3:53:32 GMT
Good question humgoo. I'll admit it could be from anything reaching back as far as the mid1980s. It just stuck in my memory. Thanks! Hopefully Mr. Campbell would drop by and solve this for us. I don't seem to be able to find a gap in its publication history, as the tale can be found in: - Mary Danby's "65 Great Tales of the Supernatural" (1979, oft-reprinted since, but perhaps too unwieldy for kids) - The Seventh PBoH (1980, for kids?!?) - Deborah Shine's "Haunting Ghost Stories" (1980, certainly for kids) - Alberto Manguel's "Black Water" (1983, another doorstopper) - Cox and Gilbert's "The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories" (1986, perhaps still the best of its kind? It's certainly still in print) - Robert Westall's "Ghost Stories" (1988, another one for kiddies) and so on ...
Or we should probably blame Peter Haining, who only took up "The Monkey's Paw" late in his career (correct me if I'm wrong)! For everything that has been and will be said against PH, you just can't call him a perpetuator of the paw tale ... He's certainly guilty of "A School Story" and "Dracula's Guest" though! |
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Post by jamesdoig on Jun 12, 2021 7:20:42 GMT
I don't seem to be able to find a gap in its publication history I'd say the problem is it's so ubiquitous nobody bothers to read it. I haven't read it since I was a kid, and my memory of it probably owes more to The Simpsons than the story itself. |
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Post by dem on Jun 12, 2021 8:16:34 GMT
Good question humgoo. I'll admit it could be from anything reaching back as far as the mid1980s. It just stuck in my memory. Thanks! Hopefully Mr. Campbell would drop by and solve this for us. I don't seem to be able to find a gap in its publication history, as the tale can be found in: - Mary Danby's "65 Great Tales of the Supernatural" (1979, oft-reprinted since, but perhaps too unwieldy for kids) - The Seventh PBoH (1980, for kids?!?) - Deborah Shine's "Haunting Ghost Stories" (1980, certainly for kids) - Alberto Manguel's "Black Water" (1983, another doorstopper) - Cox and Gilbert's "The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories" (1986, perhaps still the best of its kind? It's certainly still in print) - Robert Westall's "Ghost Stories" (1988, another one for kiddies) and so on ... Or we should probably blame Peter Haining, who only took up "The Monkey's Paw" late in his career (correct me if I'm wrong)! For everything that has been and will be said against PH, you just can't call him a perpetuator of the paw tale ... He's certainly guilty of "A School Story" and "Dracula's Guest" though! There seems to be a false memory thing going on with PH and A School Story. Like you, I was convinced he recycled it across every other anthology - it certainly seems that way - but, far as I can establish, he only used it twice - in The Nightmare Reader and The Ghosts Companion.. Could be I am very wrong on this, so please do not hesitate to set me straight. Dracula's Guest is a different matter! |
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Post by andydecker on Jun 12, 2021 9:38:13 GMT
I don't seem to be able to find a gap in its publication history I'd say the problem is it's so ubiquitous nobody bothers to read it. I haven't read it since I was a kid, and my memory of it probably owes more to The Simpsons than the story itself. I agree. I read so much about the story that I never bothered to read it for a long time. When I finally did I initially was slightly disappointed.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jun 12, 2021 12:10:35 GMT
I'd say the problem is it's so ubiquitous nobody bothers to read it. I haven't read it since I was a kid, and my memory of it probably owes more to The Simpsons than the story itself. I read it in school, and it made a lasting impression on me. I was fortunate enough to have teachers who taught writers such as Poe, Saki, Bierce, John Collier, and Shirley Jackson. |
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Post by humgoo on Jun 15, 2021 6:13:28 GMT
I read so much about the story that I never bothered to read it for a long time. When I finally did I initially was slightly disappointed. But you're not supposed to read about a story before actually reading it ... but perhaps it's inevitable as Germany and Britain are so close culturally? In hindsight I think I was fortunate, as I didn't know anything about those famous stories/writers when I first read them, being from a different culture. The joy of reading MRJ for the first time was quite life-changing, as it had never occurred to me that ghost stories could be enjoyable. I probably would not have derived so much pleasure from them had I read about him and his stories before. And I don't think I would have bothered to read "The Call of Cthulhu" at all had I been aware of the "cosmic" drivelphilosophy associated with Lovecraft (I think I was like "the build-up is a bit slow but a fun pastiche of Machen's 'Black Seal'" etc when I first read the story ... didn't know Lovecraft is supposed to be "philosophical" back then). I was thrilled when I first read "The Cicerones" in The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, but then I began to read about Robert Aickman and learned that he's supposed to be "deep", and I no longer wanted to seek out more of his works. Not just for genre fiction of course ... Say, Don Quixote and Kafka's The Trial are LOL funny, but who cares to read them when they've been labelled GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE. How much we've missed out on due to these labels? There must be plenty. Or perhaps it's just me. |
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Post by dem on Jun 15, 2021 7:30:19 GMT
Not at all. I came to it via '8th Fontana Ghost' books and Hugh Lamb's 'Victorian Nightmares,' both library loaned on impulse because I'd seen The Masque of the Red Death on TV the night before and thought maybe the story it's based on might be as good. Didn't have a clue about the authors, or who was supposed to be the "best", and what/ who you were and were not allowed to like, etc. I adored H. R. Wakefield's 'The Red House' and everything about the Lamb book. Peter Haining's 'Terror' turned me on to 'The Monk' and all these pulp guys and girls with great names who sounded like they lived in a cave or something - Seabury Quinn, Greye le Spina, August Derleth, Hugh B. Cave, E. Hoffman Price, H. P. Lovecraft. Think I was lucky because I'd already had the older guys at school lecturing me and friends that the stuff we listened to wasn't real music like ELP, so wasn't much arsed about what the critics had to say about it. |
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Post by andydecker on Jun 15, 2021 10:06:46 GMT
I read so much about the story that I never bothered to read it for a long time. When I finally did I initially was slightly disappointed. But you're not supposed to read about a story before actually reading it ... but perhaps it's inevitable as Germany and Britain are so close culturally? Not just for genre fiction of course ... Say, Don Quixote and Kafka's The Trail are LOL funny, but who cares to read them when they've been labelled GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE. How much we've missed out on due to these labels? There must be plenty. Or perhaps it's just me. You are right. One should read a story first without any baggage.
My first job as a bookseller which I started with 16 required a vocational school (if this is the right word?), where literature and literary history was on the curriculum. So we actually had to read the classics from Homer to Kafka. Reading for entertainment, the stuff we had to sell, was of course out of bounds, and genre-literature was deemed trash and got no mention. The only Gothic on the reading list was E.T.A. Hoffman, if I remember correctly, and he of course was an important German writer first and the genre connections came second if at all. In hindsight the class was awful, it lacked structure and was mostly a time to relax.
So to read essays ABOUT fiction instead the fiction - it was a good shortcut, because the list was so large and a lot of it was terribly boring to my young mind, I mean, which young lad reads Tolstoi without a gun at the temple - became quite natural. At the time I was more into Science Fiction than Horror or Gothics and wrote my first fan-reviews, which also required some background knowledge. If I see this stuff today I cringe in embarassement because of the arrogant nonsense I mostly wrote, as if the reading of one or two popular essays about this kind of literature transforms one into an expert. But to read about stuff and not the stuff itself stayed, and I mostly devoured Stephen King's Danse Macabre, one of the first of this kind of book I read in its original language. It is decades that I browsed in it, but back then it made an impression. It is not deep, but gives a good overview about the genre. I guess it was read by a lot of the critics of the coming generation. So if you got told much later in a review how Joss Whedon did a version of the Monkey's Paw in a Buffy episode, you could nod approvingly because King hat mentioned the story decades earlier (and you could bet that the reviewer had the same source as yourself and also never read said story :-)) Today I think this is the wrong approach. Better read the story before you read reviews and/or essays. It is a bad habit, which the internet made much worse. I came to it via '8th Fontana Ghost' books and Hugh Lamb's 'Victorian Nightmares,' both library loaned on impulse because I'd seen The Masque of the Red Death on TV the night before and thought maybe the story it's based on might be as good. Didn't have a clue about the authors, or who was supposed to be the "best", and what/ who you were and were not allowed to like, etc. I adored H. R. Wakefield's 'The Red House' and everything about the Lamb book. Peter Haining's 'Terror' turned me on to 'The Monk' and all these pulp guys and girls with great names who sounded like they lived in a cave or something - Seabury Quinn, Greye le Spina, August Derleth, Hugh B. Cave, E. Hoffman Price, H. P. Lovecraft. Think I was lucky because I'd already had the older guys at school lecturing me and friends that the stuff we listened to wasn't real music like ELP, so wasn't much arsed about what the critics had to say about it. I also had similar experiences. I borrowed Stoker's Dracula from the library because I wasn't allowed to watch the Lugosi movie on tv because my parents thought it not suited to my 11 or 12 year old mind (God, the early 70s were so innocent in many regards), and I remember I got a lot of rudicule on said vocational school because I was dumb enough to read my brand-new issue of Vampirella I had bought on the trip to school on the break. (International press was only avaiable in train stations in bigger cities, and the weekly school was in a neighbouring city. I loved the shop in this train-station, he sold Marvel Comics, Warren and Nick Carter paperbacks. Also rows of Beeline, which I discovered much too late. :-) Good times). That an aspiring bookseller was reading such trash was incomprehensible to most of the older collegues, we were supposed to sell literature, the cheap entertainment just payed the bills. I can remember that my boss at the time also wasn't thrilled that I permanently read crime fiction and sf and ignored the mainstream market. From his viewpoint he was right, I guess, on the question "what can you recommend for my mother for birthday" from a customer you can hardly take the new Nick Carter Killmaster from the shelf. ELP is real music? Huh, who would have thought. I confess I had my pretentious phase where I thought them awesome, but at the end of the day Alice Cooper or Slade were much better.  |
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Post by dem on Jun 18, 2021 10:46:57 GMT
Paperback seems to have been delayed, so here are the TOC taken from the kindle edition. A few predictable entries, but, from comments on this thread, a much more imaginative selection than many of us would have expected. The Giesy is actually quite notorious in that it went down so badly with Weird Tales readers Farnsworth Wright swore off including 'humorous' stories for the rest off his editorship. Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf - Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales Of The Insect Weird (British Library, June 2021) Blurb: Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe - The Sphinx
A. G. Gray jnr. - The Blue Beetle: A Confession
Anonymous - The Mummy's Soul
Jane G. Austin - After Three Thousand Years
Oliver Schreiner - A Dream of Wild Bees
H. G. Wells - The Moth
A. Lincoln Green - The Captivity of the Professor
Lafcadio Hearn - The Dream of Akinosuke and Butterflies
E. F. Benson - Caterpillars
Algernon Blackwood - An Egyptian Hornet
Christopher Blayre - The Blue Cockroach
J. U. Giesy -The Wicked Flea
Clare Winger Harris - The Miracle of the Lily
Arlton Eadie - Warning Wings
Garth Bentley - Beyond the Star Curtain
Carl Stephenson - Leiningen Versus the AntsBlurb: ‘What a terrible calamity, what a stupefying circumstance, if mosquitoes were the size of camels, and a herd of wild slugs the size of elephants invaded our gardens and had to be shot with rifles…’
A blue scarab which makes the sound of a terrifying death-tick. A moth with the markings of a dead man’s face. An empire of intelligent, aggressive and colossal ants. The insect kingdom has finally come to seek retribution for humankind’s negligence.
Never has a creature been so topical - with headlines warning of the mosquito bearing viruses, fire ants destroying power sources, invasive yellow ladybirds or an ecological insect apocalypse that threatens the very balance of our natural world.
With growing concerns about global warming, pesticides, and genetically modified crops, Eco-Gothic is moving to the fore in modern scholarship, and this collection allows readers to be a fly on the wall to some of the creepiest and crawliest accounts of insectoid horror from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson and Jane G. Austin. Fear indeed walks on many legs. |
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 18, 2021 10:56:24 GMT
ELP is real music? Huh, who would have thought. I confess I had my pretentious phase where I thought them awesome, but at the end of the day Alice Cooper or Slade were much better. John Peel had it right - "ELP? A waste of time, talent and electricity." |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 19, 2021 10:11:42 GMT
Paperback seems to have been delayed, so here are the TOC taken from the kindle edition. A few predictable entries, but, from comments on this thread, a much more imaginative selection than many of us would have expected. The Giesy is actually quite notorious in that it went down so badly with Weird Tales readers Farnsworth Wright swore off including 'humorous' stories for the rest off his editorship. Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf - Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales Of The Insect Weird (British Library, June 2021) Blurb: Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe - The Sphinx
A. G. Gray jnr. - The Blue Beetle: A Confession
Anonymous - The Mummy's Soul
Jane G. Austin - After Three Thousand Years
Oliver Schreiner - A Dream of Wild Bees
H. G. Wells - The Moth
A. Lincoln Green - The Captivity of the Professor
Lafcadio Hearn - The Dream of Akinosuke and Butterflies
E. F. Benson - Caterpillars
Algernon Blackwood - An Egyptian Hornet
Christopher Blayre - The Blue Cockroach
J. U. Giesy -The Wicked Flea
Clare Winger Harris - The Miracle of the Lily
Arlton Eadie - Warning Wings
Garth Bentley - Beyond the Star Curtain
Carl Stephenson - Leiningen Versus the AntsBlurb: ‘What a terrible calamity, what a stupefying circumstance, if mosquitoes were the size of camels, and a herd of wild slugs the size of elephants invaded our gardens and had to be shot with rifles…’
A blue scarab which makes the sound of a terrifying death-tick. A moth with the markings of a dead man’s face. An empire of intelligent, aggressive and colossal ants. The insect kingdom has finally come to seek retribution for humankind’s negligence.
Never has a creature been so topical - with headlines warning of the mosquito bearing viruses, fire ants destroying power sources, invasive yellow ladybirds or an ecological insect apocalypse that threatens the very balance of our natural world.
With growing concerns about global warming, pesticides, and genetically modified crops, Eco-Gothic is moving to the fore in modern scholarship, and this collection allows readers to be a fly on the wall to some of the creepiest and crawliest accounts of insectoid horror from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson and Jane G. Austin. Fear indeed walks on many legs.Very helpful Mr D! I may have to shell out for this one. Can't help thinking that Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf are pseudonyms for blokes with names like Bob & Doug, though, especially considering the subject matter. |
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Post by dem on Jun 19, 2021 10:27:18 GMT
Very helpful Mr D! I may have to shell out for this one. Can't help thinking that Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf are pseudonyms for blokes with names like Bob & Doug, though, especially considering the subject matter. Superbly named editors both young Ph.d's. Ms. Butcher's solo effort, Evil Roots not bad at all. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jun 19, 2021 22:34:12 GMT
ELP is real music? Huh, who would have thought. I confess I had my pretentious phase where I thought them awesome, but at the end of the day Alice Cooper or Slade were much better. I went through a similar phase myself with ELP--I even saw them live on a reunion tour--but I listened to them more recently and found their music rough going. Paperback seems to have been delayed, so here are the TOC taken from the kindle edition. A few predictable entries, but, from comments on this thread, a much more imaginative selection than many of us would have expected. The Giesy is actually quite notorious in that it went down so badly with Weird Tales readers Farnsworth Wright swore off including 'humorous' stories for the rest off his editorship. I've been morbidly curious about Giesy's "The Wicked Flea" ever since I read about it in Robert Weinberg's The Weird Tales Story. |
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Post by dem on Jun 20, 2021 7:56:14 GMT
I've been morbidly curious about Giesy's "The Wicked Flea" ever since I read about it in Robert Weinberg's The Weird Tales Story. Same thing. A Riproaring Story of a Flea That Grew to Gigantic Size. Looks like we might get it twice before years out if Wildside keep to their 'Weird Tales' schedule. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 1, 2021 16:37:08 GMT
Paperback seems to have been delayed, so here are the TOC taken from the kindle edition. A few predictable entries, but, from comments on this thread, a much more imaginative selection than many of us would have expected. The Giesy is actually quite notorious in that it went down so badly with Weird Tales readers Farnsworth Wright swore off including 'humorous' stories for the rest off his editorship. Daisy Butcher & Janette Leaf - Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales Of The Insect Weird (British Library, June 2021) Blurb: Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe - The Sphinx
A. G. Gray jnr. - The Blue Beetle: A Confession
Anonymous - The Mummy's Soul
Jane G. Austin - After Three Thousand Years
Oliver Schreiner - A Dream of Wild Bees
H. G. Wells - The Moth
A. Lincoln Green - The Captivity of the Professor
Lafcadio Hearn - The Dream of Akinosuke and Butterflies
E. F. Benson - Caterpillars
Algernon Blackwood - An Egyptian Hornet
Christopher Blayre - The Blue Cockroach
J. U. Giesy -The Wicked Flea
Clare Winger Harris - The Miracle of the Lily
Arlton Eadie - Warning Wings
Garth Bentley - Beyond the Star Curtain
Carl Stephenson - Leiningen Versus the AntsI cracked open Crawling Horror last night, and so far so good. I'd somehow never read Poe's "The Sphinx." The story starts off strong with a standard Poe setup (people retreating in the face of a plague--in this case, a cholera outbreak in New York), follows with portentous talk of omens, and then serves up a giant death's head moth (as depicted on the cover). Too bad about the ending. As the story notes point out, Gray's "The Blue Beetle: A Confession" is almost like a miniature insect-themed Frankenstein. It features a beautiful but poisonous cerulean beetle and was well worth reviving. A solid selection by the editors. |
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