Beth K. Lewis (ed.) – The New Gothic

Beth K. Lewis (ed.) – The New Gothic  (Stone Skin Press, 2013)

Cover: Jason Morningstar

Beth K. Lewis – Introduction

Jesse Bullington & S. J. Chambers – Dive In Me
Fi Michell – The Debt Collector
Laura Ellen Joyce – The Death Bell
Richard Dansky – A Meeting In The Devil’s House
Steve Dempsey – No Substitute
Ramsey Campbell – Reading The Signs
Dmetri Kakmi – The Boy By The Gate
Sean Logan – Viola’s Second Husband
Mason Wild – The Devil In A Hole
Damien Kelly – The Whipping Boy
Phil Reeves – The Vault of Artemas Smith
Ed Martin – The Fall Of The Old Faith

Biographies

Blurb:
The Gothic is the most enduring.literary tradition in history, but in recent years friendly ghosts and vegetarian vampires threaten its foundations. The New Gothic is a collection of short stories which revisits the core archetypes of the Gothic – the rambling, secret-filled building, the stranger seeking answers, the black-hearted tyrant – and reminds us not to embrace, but to fear the darkness.

A dozen tales of terror fill this anthology including an original, never-before-seen story from the godfather of modem horror, Ramsey Campbell.

Danel Olson (ed.) – Exotic Gothic 4

Danel Olson (ed.) – Exotic Gothic 4   (Drugstore Indian Press, 2014. Originally P.S., 2012)

Photo: Apolinar Lorenzo Chuca

Danel Olson – Preface: On Dark Gifting

Margo Lanagan – Blooding the Bride
Adam L.G. Nevill – Pig Thing
Kaaron Warren – The Lighthouse Keepers’ Club
Reggie Oliver – The Look
Lucy Taylor – Nikishi
Simon Kurt Unsworth – The Fourth Horse
Stephen Dedman – The Fall
Tunku Halim – In the Village of Setang
David Punter – Carving
Genni Gunn – Water Lover
Robert Hood – Escena de un Asesinato
Steve Rasnic Tem – The Old Man Beset by Demons
David Wellington – Atacama
Isobelle Carmody – Metro Winds
Terry Dowling – Mariners’ Round
Paul Finch – Oschaert
Ekaterina Sedia – Helena
Anna Taborska – Rusalka
Nick Antosca – Candy
Joseph Bruchac – Down in the Valley
Cherie Dimaline – Wanishin
Brian Evenson – Grottor
E. Michael Lewis – Such a Man I Would Have Become
Scott Thomas – The Unfinished Book
Stephen Volk – Celebrity Frankenstein

Blurb
A bumper anthology, with stories from twenty-five of today’s finest speculative fiction writers.

 

Anon – Four Gothic Novels

Anon – Four Gothic Novels   (Oxford University Press, 1994)

Horace Walpole – The Castle Of Otranto
William Beckford – Vathek
Matthew Lewis – The Monk
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein

Blurb
Macabre and melodramatic, set in haunted castles or fantastic landscapes, Gothic tales became fashionable in the late eighteenth century with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Crammed with catastrophe, terror, and ghostly interventions, the novel was an immediate success, and influenced numerous followers: These include William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), which alternates grotesque comedy with scenes of exotic magnificence in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek’s journey to damnation. The Monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis, is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest, set in the sinister Monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid. Frankenstein (1818, 1831) is Mary Shelley’s disturbing and perennially popular tale of a young student who  learns the secret of giving life to a creature made from human relics, with horrific consequences.

This collection illustrates the range and the attraction of the Gothic novel. Extreme and sensational, each of the four printed here is also a powerful psychological story of isolation and monomania.

Roger Luckhurst – Late Victorian Gothic Tales

Roger Luckhurst (ed.) – Late Victorian Gothic Tales    (Oxford World’s Classics, 2009)

Introduction
Note on sources
Note on Illustrations
Select Bibliography
A Chronology Of The 1890’s

Vernon Lee – Dionea
Oscar Wilde – Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
Henry James – Sir Edmund Orme
Rudyard Kipling – The Mark Of The Beast
B. M. Croker – The Dark Bungalow At Dakor
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Lot No. 249
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -The Case Of Lady Sannox
Grant Allen – Pallinghurst Barrow
Jean Lorrain – Magic Lantern
Jean Lorrain – The Secret Hand
Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
M. P. Sheil – Vaila

Explanatory Notes
Blurb:

‘He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head…’

The Victorian fin de siècle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.

‘C.J. T.’ – THE BEST TERRIBLE TALES

‘C.J. T.’ (ed.)  – THE BEST TERRIBLE TALES. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Originally published by Gibbings of London in 1891 with the editor given as ‘CJT’, the Reeves editions of 1912 retitle each volume The Best Terrible Tales Of … and lack even this helpful attribution. None of the authors are credited, but i’ve tried to identify the most likely suspects. For the curious, Hugh Lamb exhumed The Mountain Of Spirits and The Golden Bracelet for Tales from A Gaslit Graveyard (W. H. Allen, 1979: Coronet, 1980)

TERRIBLE TALES From The GERMAN. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Anon – The Crystal Dagger.
Anon – A Strange Bride. (aka ‘The Death-Bride’)
Anon – The Host of “The Sun.”
Baron De La Motte Fouque -The Crazy Half-Heller.
Anon – The Goldsmith of the Rue Nicaise.

TERRIBLE TALES From THE ITALIAN. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Anon – The Bridal Wreath
Anon – Domenico Matteo
Anon – The Betrothed.
Anon – The Story of the Lady Erminia.
Anon – The Brigands.
Anon – The Village Priest.
Anon – Eurispe.
Anon – Lanucci.
Anon – The Lovers.
Anon – The Unlucky Fortune.

TERRIBLE TALES From THE FRENCH (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Erckmann-Chatrian – The Mysterious Sketch.
Anon – The Weaver of Steinbach.
Anon – The Lyons Courier.
Erckmann-Chatrian – The Cabalist.
Erckmann-Chatrian – The Citizen’s Watch.
Anon – A Scene in the Desert.
Erckmann-Chatrian – Cousin Elof’s Dream.
Anon – A Legend of Marseilles
Erckmann-Chatrian – The White and the Black
Anon – Lex Talionis.

TERRIBLE TALES From THE SPANISH. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Anon – The Golden Bracelet.
Anon – The Mirror of Friends.
Anon – The Green Eyes.
Anon – Jose Maria.
Anon – The Passion Flower.
Anon – The Thirteenth.
Anon – The Effect of being Unde­ceived.
Anon –  The White Doe.
G. Bequer – Maese Perez, the Organist.
Anon – Dorido and Clorinia.
Anon – The Moonbeam.
Anon – The Mountain of Spirits.

James Doig – Australian Ghost Stories

James Doig  (ed.) – Australian Ghost Stories (Wordsworth Editions, Feb., 2010).

Peter Nabarlambari, Sugar Bag Man

James Doig – Introduction
List Of Authors

Mary Fortune – The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale
Ernest Favenc – Spirit-Led
Ernest Favenc – A Haunt of the Jinkarras
Marcus Clarke – The Mystery Of Major Molineux
Rosa Campbell Praed – The Bunyip
Louis Becke – Lupton’s Guest: A Memory of the Eastern Pacific
Edward Wheatley – The Haunted Pool: A Tale Of The Blue Mountains
Fergus Hume – A Colonial Banshee
H. B. Marriott-Watson – The Devil Of The Marsh
Edward Dyson – The Accursed Thing
Henry Lawson – The Third Murder: A New South Wales Tale
Guy Boothby – The Death Child
Guy Boothby – A Strange Goldfield
Roderick Quinn – Sea Voices
Beatrice Grimshaw – The Cave
James Francis Dwyer – The Cave of the Invisible
Dulcie Dreamer – Hallowe’en

Blurb:
Murderous ghosts, horrific curses and monstrous beings haunt an unforgiving landscape into which travellers stray at their peril. Journey through the dark byways of Australia’s Gothic past in the rare stories gathered in this memorable new collection. Work by acclaimed Australian writers such as Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson and Edward Dyson appears alongside many lesser-known authors such as Beatrice Grimshaw, Mary Fortune and Ernest Favenc. Many of the stories collected here have never been reprinted since their first publication in 19th and early 20th century periodicals and showcase the richness and variety of the Australian ghost and horror story.

James Doig provides an authoritative introduction full of fresh insights into Australian Gothic fiction with detailed biographical notes on the authors represented.

see also Australian Ghost Stories thread on Vault Of Evil Forum

Chris Baldick & Robert Morrison – John Polidori: The Vampyre & Others

Chris Baldick & Robert Morrison  (eds.) – John Polidori:  The Vampyre & Other Tales Of The Macabre (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Notes On The Text
Selected Bibliography
Chronology Of The Magazines

John Polidori – The Vampyre
Horace Smith – Sir Guy Eveling’s Dream
William Carleton – Confessions Of A Reformed Ribbonman
Edward Bulwer – Monos And Daimonos
Allan Cunningham – The Master Of Logan
Anonymous – The Victim
James Hogg – Some Terrible Letters From Scotland
Anonymous – The Curse
Anonymous – Life In Death
N. P. Willis – My Hobby, —- Rather
Catherine Gore – The Red Man
Charles Lever – Post-Mortem Recollections Of A Medical Lecturer
Letitia E. Landon – The Bride Of Lindorf
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Passage In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess

Appendix A: Preliminaries for The Vampyre
Appendix B: Note On The Vampyre
Appendix C: Lord Byron, by Augustus Darvell
Bibliographical Notes
Explanatory Notes

Margaret Armour – The Eerie Book

Anon [Margaret Armour] (ed.) – The Eerie Book: Tales Of The Macabre And Supernatural (Shiells, London, 1898: Castle, 1981)

Illustrated by W. B. MacDougal

Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque Of The Red Death
George W. M. Reynolds – The Iron Coffin (extract from Faust, A Romance)
Hans Andersen – The Mother And The Dead Child
Robert Hunt – Tregeagle (extract)
Catherine Crowe – The Dutch Officer’s Story
Edgar Allan Poe – The Cask Of Amontillado
Anon – Earl Beadie’s Game At Cards
Mary W. Shelley – Frankenstein (Abridged)
Catherine Crowe – The Garde Chasse
Anon – A Dream Of Death
Rev. Bourchier Wrey Saville – The Mysterious Horseman
Catherine Crowe – The Blind Beggar Of Odessa
Robert Chambers – The Story Of Major Weir
Rev. Bourchier Wrey Saville – Marshal Blucher
Baron de la Motte Fouque – Sir Hulbrand’s Wife (extract from Undine)
Thomas de Quincey – Klosterheim, or The Masque (abridged)

Published in the USA in 1981, it’s hard to tell if this is a fascimile copy of an authentic Victorian collection or just a modern take on what the editor suspected one would have looked like. Interesting rather than great, with three solid stories from Catherine Crowe (more often than not included in ‘factual’ ghost story anthologies), and two excellent tasters from de la Motte Fouque and Reynolds, the latter serving up a torture chamber death to Lucrezia Borgia.

see also Vault’s thread for The Eerie Book

David Blair – Gothic Short Stories

David Blair (ed.) – Gothic Short Stories (Wordsworth Editions, 2002)

Anna Letitia Aiken – Sir Bertrand: A Fragment
Nathan Drake and Anonymous – Captive of the Banditti
Anonymous – Extracts from Gosschen’s Diary: No. 1
Charles Robert Maturin – The Parricide’s Tale
Anonymous – The Spectre Bride
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Charles Dickens – A Madman’s Manuscript
J.S. le Fanu – Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Ethan Brand
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Body-Snatcher
Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper
Ambrose Bierce – The Death of Halpin Frayser
M.R. James – Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook
Ralph Adams Cram – No. 252 Rue M. le Prince
S. Carleton – The Lame Priest
Mary Wilkins Freeman – Luella Miller
Richard Middleton – The Bird in the Garden
E.F. Benson – The Room in the Tower

Blurb:

Selected and Edited with an Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent at Canterbury

This superb new collection brings together stories from the earliest decades of Gothic writing with later 19th and early 20th century tales from the period in which Gothic diversified into the familiar forms of the ghost-and horror-story. Some of these stories, like the haunting The Lame Priest are ‘lost masterpieces’ and several have never been anthologised before.

Richard Dalby – Twelve Gothic Tales

Richard Dalby (ed.) – Twelve Gothic Tales (Oxford, 1998)

Richard Dalby – Introduction

Charles R. Maturin – Lexlip castle
Mary W. Shelley – The Dream
Edgar Allan Poe – Metzengerstein
Sabine Baring-Gould – Master Sacristan Eberhart
J. Sheridan Le fanu – Dickon the Devil
Bram Stoker – The Secret of the Growing Gold
F. Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile
Stephen Hall – By One, By Two, and By Three
L.A.G. Strong – The Buckrose Ring
Basil Copper – The Knocker at the Portico
Gerald Durrell – The Entrance

Blurb:

In this anthology we see a dozen fine examples of Gothic literature, spanning over one hundred and fifty years–from Mary Shelley and Charles Maturin’s classic fiction up to an unexpected master of the macabre, Gerald Durrell. All of the tales feature sinister settings such as castles and ancient houses, along with protagonists who are haunted by the tyranny of the past and physically or else spiritually incarcerated by their circumstances. Designed to provide an overview of the genre, and offering a balance of classic and more unusual stories, this is a book that will appeal to both the newcomer and dedicated collector of Gothic fiction.