The Necromancer

by Peter Teuthold

The Necromancer attempts to capitalise on the vogue of the German setting for the Gothic, and was quite likely no translation at all but written in English. Isabelle Thorpe in Jane Austin's Northanger Abbey reads out a list of intended future reading matter in which is included The Necromancer .
This novel is filled with "Gothic" conjuring up of spirits, the theme of incest, the obsession with one person's power over another, sepulchral settings (a visit to a dungeon, the company of the rotting dead - in short, the horrid stuff of the Gothic novel. It is worthy of note that Matthew Lewis' famous novel The Monk appeared two years after The Necromancer and makes use of many of the same Gothic materials, though with more abandon than in "Flammenberg's" book. The Necromancer is at pains to pass itself off as a story based on real fact; repeatedly the narrator insists that the events "chronicled" have a basis in truth.

Genres: Gothic, Classics, Horror, Fiction, 18th Century, Fantasy, Literature

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1794

Reviews

[Dfordoom · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her satire of the gothic novel, Northanger Abbey, one of Jane Austen’s characters recommends seven “horrid novels” to her friend. For many years it was assumed that Austen had made up the titles but in fact Austen knew her gothic literature (one suspects she was rather a fan) and all seven are real books. First published in 1794, Peter Teuthold’s The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest was one of these seven books.

Teuthold claimed the book to be a translation from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg (real name Carl Friedrich Kahlert). It had been assumed that Teuthold made this claim to give the book a more German flavour but apparently it really was a translation.

There has been a certain amount of interest in these “horrid novels” and all are currently in print although information on the authors is hard to come by.

The Necromancer has a bewilderingly complex structure. It is a series of tales within tales within tales. This can be seen as a flaw but 19th century gothic novelists liked to use similar structures to give the impression of a series of eyewitness accounts.

To attempt to describe the plot in any detail would only cause more confusion. You just have to go with it.

The central figure in all the tales is Volkert the Necromancer although this is not immediately apparent since he appears in various disguises and under several false names. After a while you learn to assume that any elderly man with a mysterious or sinister air to him is probably Volkert, and you’re usually correct.

Volkert is a sergeant in the Austrian Army who has dabbled in the occult for many years. He has found it to be a profitable sideline but a dangerous one as he has found himself more and more deeply enmeshed in crime as a result. Volkert is both a necromancer and a con-man. While several of the narrators believe that Volkert really possesses supernatural powers it is clear that most if not all of the supernatural events in which he is involved are elaborate frauds.

Of course there has to be a moral message, and that message is that a life devoted to such swindles will be a life of increasing moral degradation.

Jane Austen’s heroines would have been well pleased with this novel. There are ruined castles, dungeons, hidden passages, haunted inns, executions, duels and numerous ghostly manifestations. There are thrills and chills. There’s gothic atmosphere laid on as thickly as anyone could possibly desire. Necromancers were seemingly much in demand in 18th century Germany, for purposes both honest and dishonest. Usually the latter.

This is certainly not one of the classics of the genre but it has its own bizarre charm. Worth a read.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth the read if you're interested in early Gothic literature. Not the smoothest translation, and I liked some bits more than others, but overall I thought it was pretty fascinating.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is some 18th century Scooby Doo business. But it’s fun and soooo great to read during a thunderstorm!

[The Usual · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to be going through a gothic phase at the moment; sitting here under the eyes of my ancestral portraits, listening to the screams of my mad sister alternating with the howls of the storm outside as lightning smites the rain-lashed mountain peaks, and…

No.

I do, however, seem to have picked up a taste for gothic novels. There’s something in the theatrical nature of a gothic novel that speaks to my blackened soul – and my twisted sense of humour for that matter – and that leads me to seek the things out. This is one of the little list of books you’ll find in chapter six of Northanger Abbey (take the A46 out of Bath and stop for lunch at Petty France; the house must be somewhere near Stroud or Cirencester): Miss Andrews’ reading list.

I wonder what Miss Andrews thought of it.

I wonder what I’d have made of it had I not made one trifling error…

You see, I have – though sheer carelessness – read two versions of the first part; let us call them version A and version B. Both were accessed through links found on Wikipedia, and they are, frankly, rather different.

Let’s start with version B. Version B purports to be the original English translation: “THE NECROMANCER: COMPRISING A SERIES OF WONDERFUL EVENTS, FOUNDED ON FACT, Translated from a New German Work, purposely for this Magazine, By T. DUTTON, Esq.”. I liked version B: I thought it was lively, thrilling, more than a little lurid, and dispensed such details as were necessary for the story without getting bogged down. I don’t know if T. Dutton embroidered the original at all, but he did a good job, and I was rather annoyed to realise that this (suspiciously short) version was only part one of three. Which I should have deduced from the page-count.

So, of necessity, I moved on to version A, a 1927 printing kindly provided online by someone Canadian.

Well… You know how it goes when you go from one translation to another… Or perhaps you don’t? Maybe you never lend books. All I can say is never lend anything with the expectation of getting it back.
In any case, version A is less to my taste in terms of style, and of course differences of content really stuck in my mind. Version A gets bogged down in biographical detail at one point (though not to the extent of The Mysteries of Udolpho), and doesn’t contain some of the description that smooths out version B. It’s the same thing, it’s the same shape, it’s just not as good. Version B could have been written by Edgar Allan Poe; version A could also have been written by Poe, but only as a first draft. I don’t know if this translator cut the text at all; if he did I wish he hadn’t. So much of atmosphere is in the execution.

This is from version A:

“… we arrived at the gate and it was opened at his command; our way led straight through the suburbs, at the bottom of which a solitary house was standing; my conductor knocked at the door; we were let in: the house appeared to be empty and deserted, and we saw no living soul except an old decrepid man, who had opened the door. The stranger ordered a light; a lamp was brought, and he walked without stopping, through a dark passage till we came to a door, leading into a garden, in the back of which was a small pleasure-house; my conductor opened the door, and we entered a small damp room.”

It does the job, yes, but it’s a little sparse, don’t you think?
This from version B:

“… city gates: these were in an instant thrown open by the guard, and now our way led across the suburbs.
At the extremity stood a lonely antiquated house or castle, surrounded with a high wall, and apparently in a very ruinous condition. The stranger stopped short; three times he struck with his staff against the massy gates: hollow sounded his knocks through the solitary apartments. An old grey-headed porter gave us admittance. The stranger demanded a light; a lantern was brought: in mysterious silence he traversed the rooms, where desolation seemed to have taken up her abode; all was waste, empty, uninhabited; the old grey-headed porter excepted, I saw no signs of a single living animal. After passing through a long narrow passage, we came into a spacious garden, if a place overgrown with briars and thorns may deserve that title. Here, however, the former picture of silent solitary desolation was quite reversed: bats and owls swarmed in every part, and filled the air with their doleful lamentable cries. A ruinous antique summer-house, built of flint and granite, stood at the bottom; thither I followed my conductor.”

See?
Or perhaps you prefer the other one? I might just be a bit odd.

Yes, okay, no need to keep on about it!

In any case, I rather wonder what Dutton would have done with the other two parts.

What happens in version A is that we switch from a frame narrative of two old friends exchanging ghost-stories by the fireside to epistolary format. My goodness, they wrote long letters in the eighteenth century.
The effect of that is to favour the sparser texture of the… text. We move from merely relating ghostly goings-on to explaining them as well, and as the book wore on, I realised something:

I didn’t want the ghostly goings-on explained.

I would have been happier had I not read the investigations and confessions of the latter two parts, and had they been left as ghost-stories, particularly since the explanations were, to my mind, less plausible than the actions of spirits would have been. Now, how much of that is my fault (some of it, certainly), how much that of the author (because it’s clearly what he set out to do), and how much of the translator (come back, T. Dutton, come back!), I wouldn’t like to say, but the fact remains that I felt a tiny bit cheated.

I still enjoyed the thing, I just felt I should have enjoyed it more.

So I think this is, on the whole, second-tier gothic – as is Udolpho for that matter – and that, curiosity satisfied, I can move on.

Exit stage left, cue clanking of ghostly chains.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with almost everyone nowadays who reads The Necromancer, it came to my attention as one of the “horrid novels” mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The Necromancer is a lot more fun than Northanger Abbey, though its structure could use some improvement. I long to have been The Necromancer’s editor, in which case I would have harangued the writer (or more precisely, the translator, Peter Teuthold) into rearranging some of the text and perhaps sculpting a less anticlimactic ending.

Here's how the book starts:

The hurricane was howling, the hailstones beating against the windows, the hoarse croaking of the raven bidding adieu to autumn, and the weather-cock's dismal creaking joined with the mournful dirge of the solitary owl;—such was the evening when Herman and Elfrid, who had been united by the strongest bonds of friendship from their youthful days, were seated by the cheering fireside.

If that doesn’t make you want to read The Necromancer, then you don’t deserve to read The Necromancer. There’s nothing transcendental here, but it’s a great example of a late 18th-century gothic novel, with pleasantly over-the-top atmosphere and enjoyably implausible plots. It also has a complex structure of nested narratives, also typical of its era, in which various narrators include stories from other sub-narrators and lengthy texts of letters they have received, which sometimes include further sub-narration. I wish more contemporary writers would attempt a similar style.

[Samichtime · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a wild ride and a true classic in the gothic horror genre, but I’d say it’s really a book made for hardcore nerds. No offense meant. You have to understand SO many references to understand what’s going on, including knowing the word heautonimoroumenos, an adjective the author casually throws around like it’s the word “red” or “green”! Maybe if I meet the pope I’ll hand him my copy, I really can’t think of that many other people capable of reading this book and actually understanding it. It’s a good time, but jeez Louise!

[Arnstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A famous German Gothic novel and ghost story that still survives, mostly through this unfaithful English translation; review covering both volumes.

The novel (or perhaps antinovel) known as Der Geistbanner, translated as The Necromancer, number amongst the most well known early Gothic novels, and as one of the most important Schauerromanen. It has in time become the object of a notably large amount of rumours, yet despite its notoriety seem to remain unexplored even by most of whom have heard of it.

In the mountainous area of Southern Germany known as the Black Forest, where the towering woodlands ensnares the sunlight and condemns the ground to a dusky gloom, one will find a natural breeding ground of supernatural figments, where hauntings abound and revenants roam; here, amongst the wondrous and fantastical there resided a man during the Seven Years' War (1756-63), and the years following it, who had the dark knowlegde necessary to salve or condemn those who would traverse this cursed land. Covering the pages of this book are several narratives – separated from one another by time, and each with their own protagonists and plots – who endeavour to shed light on this enigmatic man and villain that is known as the Necromancer; collectively they will enable the reader to acquaint themselves with his story and purpose, which, due to this unusual style of narration, yields a characterization which is equally unusual in its depth. Expect, haunted castles, dark rituals, and geists of surprising violence and apparent malevolence; do also expect a mode of storytelling that is almost unheard of as the book breaks with the conventions of what a novel should be, most importantly in the sense that it puts more emphasis on exploring the villain than the protagonists despite retaining their perspectives.

In the social circles where Gothic novels feature as regular curriculum, Der Geistbanner/The Necromancer holds some notoriety as the object of a notably large amount of rumours, perhaps due to its elevated status as one of seven books grouped as the Northanger Horrid Novels. This top seven list of the most frightening novels was voiced by Isabella Thorpe in Jane Austin's Northanger Abbey – this list seems to be heeded by many still, despite the two centuries that has since passed – and several of these titles were thought lost or made up by Austin. The Necromancer was one of these. An additional accusation was that Peter Teuthold, that translated the novel to English, had written it himself. Well, the Deutche Digitale Bibliothek contains a digital copy of the German first edition, which should put all of these worries to rest. What is true, however, is that Teuthold made many changes to the text as he translated it, including stealing parts – seventy-five pages of largely irrelevant banditry, actually – from another novel (F. Schiller's The Criminal of Lost Honour), and that Kahlert himself apparently approved of this as he re-translated it back with these alterations for the German second printing. There were also some notable clamour regarding how offensive the translation allegedly was towards either Germans or the British, or both; this reviewer, though, found it hard to find anything of the sort in the text itself.

This unusual piece of Gothic fiction would probably have been largely forgotten if not for Austin as well as its unintentional notoriety, and even then it remained a footnote until it was 'rediscovered' much later. Fortunately this gem is still with us and has been printed in several editions in recent times. The edition on which the review is based, the Gale ECCO Print Edition, is a faximilie of the original volumes as released by Willian Lane in 1794, allowing everyone to peruse the text exactly as it was presented to the readers of the era; the reproduction is in relatively large letters who are so well preserved that there is almost no loss of legibility. It is also worth noting the Valancourt edition with its highly informative introduction, both editions have their beneifits but no real drawbacks which should make the choice between them nothing but a matter of preference.

Due to The Necromancer's unorthodoxy as a novel it does not cater to anyone who unfamiliar with its ilk yet who wishes to sample it, rather it is a tale for those who already have an interest in ghost stories, old Gothic fiction, bandit novels, or the like. It holds no heroines, nor any true hero, and absolutely no elements borrowed from romantic fiction as was so common at the time. This allows the connection to the horror genre to shine through more strongly, thus it is an indication of how the genre came to evolve during the following century, i.e. away from being a subgenre of the romance novel and into its own niche. More concisely, the allure of this novel lies primarly within the terrible as opposed to the mushy, not forgetting its fascinating otherness and ghost story charm.

[Aline Cristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

O necromante, como o nome já diz fala sobre uma pessoa, ou pessoas que alegam ter o poder de entrar em contato com os mortos e, desde que vi o projeto no catarse fiquei super curiosa em ler, principalmente por se tratar de um clássico gótico alemão. Até ter acesso a esse livro e ao "Aparicionista" meu contato com livros alemães eram quase nulos e ler esses livros foram experiências maravilhosas!

Assim como no "Aparicionista", "O necromante" traz uma série de relatos sobre pessoas que tiveram alguma experiência "sobrenatural" com este profissional do oculto e, antes de ler, tive um leve receio de que a leitura pudesse ser maçante de alguma forma, porém foi um livro que conquistou minha atenção desde o começo e que eu praticamente devorei.
Gostei muito dos mistérios e de como todas as histórias se relacionam de alguma maneira no final. Foi uma leitura muito gostosa não apenas pela história em si, mas por me levar a uma outra época e cultura. Estou ansiosa para ler os próximos volumes da coleção e, inclusive, já tenho o volume 3. Tenho certeza de que vou adorar também!

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great Gothic novel. It is full of creepy and ghostly aspects but (as I prefer) all has a rational explanation at the end.
I was happy to see there were no fainting females in this particular Gothic novel (though it is fun to read those too) and while I found the story within the story within the story within the story (yes, there really is that many levels) a bit strange and the ending very moral, I really liked it.

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first of the "Horrid Novels" Isabella Thorpe suggests as future reading for Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey. While I read the two most discussed books in that novel -- Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho and Gregory Lewis' The Monk -- a decade and a half ago, back in my university days when I had library access to harder to find books, it never occurred to me at the time to search out the seven other titles name dropped in my favorite Austen novel. It was only years later that I discovered that, until a few decades ago, everyone assumed these were titles Austen had made up because they weren't in particularly wide circulation by the time Austen's novel was printed. (Although Northanger Abbey was released in 1818, after Austen had passed away, the earliest draft was actually completed in the late 18th century, when Austen was 19. It's commonly thought that the Horrid Novels were probably in general circulation when she was in her mid to late teens but had stopped making the rounds by the time the work was finally published.)

As with some other reviewers, I actually found myself reading a portion of this work twice. My e-library, Hoopla, had a copy of this work, but in doing research, I found that the 39 pages listed were an extract of the book. Because this work (as with most Gothic fiction) consists of characters telling portions of narrative to other characters who later write it down, or they write what happened in letters and things of that fashion, you get multiple first person POVs. So, what Hoopla had was actually the second narrative offered in the first half of the story. And it interested me enough that I was curious to read the rest of it, so I did some digging to try and find an accessible copy of the rest of it. And find it I did on the Canadian server of Project Gutenberg, which has a copy of the 1927 printing of the novel, which claims to be a reprinting of the original translation from the German as it would have been read in the late 18th century when Austen would have read it. And it flows in the same style as other works I've read from the period, so I can't really argue against the likelihood of its authenticity.

As to the story itself, it's...decent. I love Gothic literature, so I know the tropes involved, and I also know that all the supernatural happenings are never truly supernatural. However, aside from the initial stories about ghosts being raised from the dead, nothing extremely interesting happens. It's just a bunch of soldiers and travelers meeting up in inns and finding out they've been robbed and somehow never catching on that the ghosts and the robberies are related. (Maybe I've just seen too much Scooby Doo, but this seems like an obvious correlation to me.)

The narrative also tries too hard to make everyone penitent and likeable. (Well, as long as they're men. All the women are "whores" in this narrative.) I like robbers with a heart of gold, but most of the ones in this story are NOT that?! And yet, we're made to think they have noble intentions cos...reasons? Yeah, it ain't gonna fly with me, buddy. Especially since you keep having all these characters refer to women as whores constantly. The double standard is time period appropriate but still rage inducing.

So, worth a read if you have the time. If you don't have the time, I do suggest at least searching out the narrative extract because it does give you a complete short story and will give you an idea of the kind of adventures you would find in the complete novel.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange curiosity, a tortured plot told in tortured antiquarian prose, whose interconnected threads seem to be willfully indecipherable. There are times when the language seems to shift, from something fairly straightforward, into an antique style that's mildly mind-numbing. The characters aren't entirely compelling, especially the bland protagonists, the "Lieutenants" (whose actual names are redacted). This lack of defined characters improves marginally at the end of the book, as three characters -- John the servant, Volkert, and Wolf -- suddenly come into focus, and provide a little more flesh to a generally obscure and obtuse narrative.

What makes the novel interesting, and perhaps worth reading if you have the patience for it, is the convoluted shape of the plot and its telling. The plot centers around a series of incursions into a haunted castle, whose reputation and ominous character overshadows the local villages. This has overtones of both mysticism and classic banditry, and most of the plot's complications are the connective tissue between these incursions.

For such an old novel, The Necromancer ends up being surprisingly non-linear. The involvement of various characters, the intersections of mistakes and motives, and the final slow revelation of the mechanisms behind these events: it's worth reading to see it get tangled up and then unfold again, even if it's sort of awkward and ungainly in its construction. It isn't cohesive or economical, but it's got its thrilling moments, and it's grotesque enough that it's worth some of your time, just to poke at it and see how it responds.

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ξεκινώντας την πορεία μου στα επτά Horrid Novels του Northanger Abbey ήξερα ότι θα πέσω και σε κάποια βιβλία που δεν διεκδικούν ιδιαίτερες δάφνες ποιότητας. Ένα από αυτά είναι και αυτό που ξεκινάει ως μία συλλογή αδιάφορων ιστοριών φαντασμάτων για να καταλήξει σε μία εξιστόρηση εγκληματικών ενεργειών, προς το τέλος όταν εξηγούνται όσα διαβάσαμε. Τίποτα σπουδαίο δηλαδή, αν και αυτό το τέλος που αναφέρω μετριάζει κάπως τις εντυπώσεις.

[Daniel Gárgula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uma leitura valiosa
Termino de ler O Necromante: uma História Fantástica de Fontes Orais e Escritas, de Lorenz Flammenberg, publicação da Editora Sebo Clepsidra e me vejo completamente estupefato. Foi meu primeiro contato com o gótico alemão. Como quem nos acompanha sabe, faço minhas pesquisas informais através do gótico para melhor entender o horror moderno. Sem sombra de dúvida, esse livro me revela não só sua influência sobre o horror, mas vai além, demonstrando também influência no gênero policial.

A história de O Necromante
Nessa obra temos o encontro de dois grandes amigos, Hermann e Hellfried, após trinta longos anos de separação. O encontro mostra uma amizade muito forte de ambos como uma irmandade. Eles colocam os fatos que viveram em suas vidas, enquanto separados, na busca de retomar o tempo perdido. Após alguns dias de muita conversa, os dois percebem que foram testemunhas de fatos curiosos acontecidos perto da Floresta Negra. O mais curioso entretanto é que ambas as histórias possuem paralelos que dão ao leitor inúmeras visões dos fatos que ali ocorreram.

A história se divide em duas partes: uma narração oral e, na segunda, um relato escrito. Percebemos no texto a visão de época, lembrando que estamos falando de uma obra de 1792. Em um dos momentos se discute banalmente sobre os níveis de tortura a serem utilizados para se conseguir uma confissão, prática que na época era aceita e que para nós causa, no mínimo, estranheza.

Refletindo sobre o gótico alemão
Percebo como o gótico alemão é rico. Ele nos leva do sobrenatural ao realismo em uma mesma narrativa. Isso é tão poderoso, que nos momentos finais não pude deixar de lembrar de um personagem bem mais recente – e que sou apaixonado exatamente pela sua inteligência superior – Fu Manchu. Este personagem é uma criação de Sax Rohmer e muito semelhante ao Necromante de Flammenberg, utilizando mil estratagemas brilhantes e intrincados para alcançar seus objetivos. Suas incursões, ataques e fugas são tão incríveis que uma aura mística permanece por onde ele passa, para só então ser desconstruída a muito esforço pelas forças policiais.

Fiquei tão feliz com minhas descobertas. Não pude deixar de trocar uma ideia sobre o livro com Cid Vale, do Sebo Clepsidra. Enquanto ele agregava mais informação sobre a importância do gótico alemão e sua influência histórica, me vêm à mente a crítica que H. P. Lovecraft faz à Ann Radcliffe (influenciada pelo “sobrenatural explicado” do gótico alemão), dizendo que o excesso de explicação de seus textos atrapalha o tom sobrenatural de suas histórias, mesmo reconhecendo sua grandiosidade (O horror sobrenatural em literatura).

A crítica de Lovecraft só se sustenta se olharmos apenas do ponto de vista do horror. O gênero do horror não carece de explicação para os fatos sobrenaturais que ocorrem. Isso inclusive dá alicerce à atmosfera que acaba sendo gerada. Acredito entretanto que o gótico não deve ser analisado apenas por esse prisma. Nesse ponto, olhando o gótico alemão, percebo que ele é o tronco de onde bifurcam ambos os gêneros literários do horror e do policial.

Essa narrativa utiliza uma apresentação sobrenatural inicial que ambienta o leitor em uma situação sobrenatural envolta em mistérios. A história segue para uma série de elucidações dos fatos anteriormente apresentados, desconstruindo o transcendental e deixando-o crível, ganhando assim traços que podemos encontrar em histórias detetivescas.

Retorno então ao paralelo que fiz com Fu Manchu, de Sax Rohmer. Suas aventuras possuem a mesma construção, caminhando inicialmente pelo sobrenatural, em cenas as quais o leitor pode apenas tentar conjecturar como foram executadas, até que esforços hercúleos consigam então explicar os fatos. Não sei se Rohmer teve acesso à obra de Flammenberg ou Ann Radcliffe, mas certamente alguma influência, mesmo que indireta, é possível identificar em sua criação. A literatura tem esse poder de permitir correlações aparentemente distantes.

Vale ressaltar que o prefácio do Cid Vale no livro é uma pequena e valiosíssima aula sobre o gótico alemão em suas origens e importância. A tradução é assinada por Lucas de Souza Cartaxo Vieira.

Conclusão
Nada como a curiosidade para nos atiçar a alma. Em minhas pesquisas sigo por inúmeros livros e autores, antigos e novos, que vão me mostrando aos poucos como foi forjado o que hoje chamamos de horror.

Talvez agora vocês entendam porque fiquei completamente estupefato com a leitura que fiz. Livros como O Necromante: uma História Fantástica de Fontes Orais e Escritas, de Lorenz Flammenberg, me mostram que o caminho que estou trilhando está certo. Uma leitura com mais de duzentos anos, capaz de, nos dias de hoje, se mostrar absolutamente útil e necessária.

Parabéns à Editora Sebo Clepsidra pela publicação. Flammenberg com certeza está feliz e surpreso em saber que seu livro, tantos séculos depois, é ainda lido em paragens de além mar!

Resenha publicada no blog Canto do Gárgula em 22/01/2020

[julia lark · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Fun gothic tales. Not crazy about the tense/plot structure, feel like it dulls the stories.

[Tracey Madeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

In common with the Horrid Mysteries this is another German gothic tale. It begins with two friends, Elfrid, who has returned home to look after his aged parents until they pass away and Herman, who is married. When they meet, Elfrid tells him of his experience with ghosts. Whilst staying at an inn, he is robbed of his possessions, but is saved from destitution by a stranger. Eager to discover the identity of this stranger, he is then visited by his mother’s ghost.

Herman relates a similar experience. Whilst staying at an inn near the Black Forest, he made enquiries about the owner of a now deserted castle. That night, he hears a stampede of horses through the village heading towards the castle and at the stroke of one, the ghosts were said to return to hell. Together with his companions, they agree to spend a night in the castle, but they can not catch the horse riders.

When they venture into the forest, they meet an old man who is the necromancer of the title. He takes them into the dungeons of the castle. Here, he conducts rituals to raise spirits from the dead. The explanation of these wonders comes through the discovery of a manuscript by Baron von Volkert detailing how the illusions were achieved. Like Ann Radcliffe, this novel seeks to dispel superstition and explain the supernatural.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never see anyone talk about this book but it definitely delivered on what I was looking for in a gothic story! dark forests, the supernatural, a decrepit castle, and questions of morality.
“In the desponding situation in which I was, I would not have hesitated to pledge the health of an infernal spirit, in order to have a confidant.”

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

My understanding is that this began life as a collection of German ghost stories, but the English translator adapted it into a single narrative. That explains a lot, but he still picked an overly complicated structure to tie the various stories together.

Rather than an episodic format, the novel has a framing sequence in which two old friends get together and catch up. They share stories of supernatural encounters, but the characters in the stories then share their own stories, drilling deeper and deeper with stories embeded within stories that are embeded in still other stories. The translator also has a real aversion to proper names, so most of the characters are referred to only by initials or other descriptors. It became impossible for me to keep track of who was narrating what.

And although there are some cool, spooky moments, they all have mundane (and overlong) explanations. I enjoyed the general atmosphere of the descriptions, but there are much better gothic novels that deliver the same thing.

[Joanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was kind of funny but also pretty boring.

Also if you meet a weird, old dude in the middle of the woods, and he tells you he is a necromancer, you probably shouldn't encourage him.

[Becci · Rating 3 out of 5]

You really need to concentrate to follow the story within a story within a story that connects to a story that then tells a story.

[Old-Fashioned Agnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Necromancer; or, the Tale of the Black Forest” by Peter Teuthold, 1794.

During the first pages of the story, the plot appears to be very naive. However, it disappoints in a positive way later.

A great disadvantage of this book is that the 2 main characters have very similar names so I could never remember who is who.

There is a castle that is considered haunted. In a village near this castle ghosts appear every night. The visitors of that village decide to see if the legend, that no one can survive coming to that castle, is true.
They survive, only one servant disappears and no one could find him.

Later it turns out that the castle was haunted not by ghosts but by robbers who spread the rumours that it was haunted to keep people away from it.

Many people believed in the supernatural powers of the necromancer that he could summon ghosts. However, it was all fake, he knew tricks with which he deluded people.

The moral of the story is that even when we’re convinced that we saw something paranormal, it might have been just a delusion that can be rationally explained.

The most interesting chapters were the last ones, the ones concerning the chief of the robbers. He resembles Frankenstein’s monster in many ways (Frankenstein was written later than this book). He belonged to the poor class. He hunted illegally to improve his situation but he was severely punished. The punishment was much greater than the guilt. This motivated him to become evil. He realised that the system in which they live was not just. He murdered the person, because of whom he was taken too prison. Later he found out that he was famous among the gang of the robbers and became their leader.

[Andrius · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Necromancer is a very formulaic Gothic novel that doesn't execute that formula very well. The story is a messy chain of typical Gothic motifs like the explained supernatural, lots and lots of robbers, and an old castle that the author doesn't bother describing much. There's nothing here worth talking about plot or theme wise.

That said, this is still a pretty bizarre book -- to the extent that it might not really be the book I described above. Apparently the German original might have been translated very, very unfaithfully (and spliced with entire sections plagiarised from other books that had nothing to do with this one!) by Peter Teuthold, who might have set out to discredit German literature with his translations. Apparently some scholars have suggested that the original may have been a series of only loosely linked vignettes/stories -- which would explain why the narrative here feels so messy.

The other, less significant aspect of this that stood out to me was the use of frame narratives. It's a very Gothic thing to do of course, but The Necromancer goes crazy with it -- at one point I think it goes maybe four or five stories deep? Not that it uses the technique in a particularly meaningful way or anything like that, I just found it fun.

All in all, though, not worth the time I spent on it.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fourth of the seven so-called "Horrid Novels" mentioned in Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey." It's pretty silly. I enjoyed the first half, in which a gnarly old dude apparently has the ability to call up the dead and other neat tricks. But then it turns out he's a fraud, and his so-called magic was just a bunch of hocus-pocus. But the fakery described strains credulity much more than the calling up of evil spirits. The Valencourt Books edition has an essay titled "Queering the Necromancer" which unconvincingly argues that necromancy is a stand-in for sodomy. In a footnote it praises as "powerful" Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick's infamous essay, "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl." If tenuous theses are your thing, then you'll love the essay.

The introduction does a good job of sleuthing who the real author of The Necromancer is. In the book's favor is that the prose is relatively straightforward and it's short (196 pages)

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

An adventurous tale of mystery and robbers, and inn keepers and old friends. Many reviews complain that this story is hard to follow as a tale within a tale within a tale but I found it straightforward and intrinsically written so as to include all of Volkert's adventures. Additionally, Volkert himself is not as much a mystery as other readers claim, even when not named as such, his appearance doesn't change and the formula of this gothic adventure is such that he is obviously present in the center of all necromancy-lit ghost stories.

The novel begins as a chilly set of ghost tales and ends in a whimsical adventure taking into account the love, misfortune, guilt, pride, and grandeur of Volkert's very interesting life.

[curleduptoes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems authors in older times liked describing a particular situation or character or relationship in a very lengthy manner, that unfortunately slows down the pace of the book, turning it into an uninteresting one as the pages roll by.. the writing is the typical 18th-century types, like you know, just too much. The same happened to me while reading this one. This novel was gripping till the end of the 2nd story, thereafter it became quite boring with unnecessary use of words and too many sentences.

I had to stop reading it. This may be happening probably because I prefer fast-paced books.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typically furnished with a wealth of atmospheric description, and the usual exaggerated emotion of woe by the protagonists. What holds back this novel is that the frame narrative is so poorly represented in the layout of the book, with what little chapter structure exists having next to no correlation to the subplot being described, or the narrator of that section. As the story is sometimes told in levels four deep, it needs to be read only in long sittings, or else making sense of the story becomes like counting dream levels in Inception.

[Karen Kohoutek · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's crazy. I loved it! Very different from the Ann Radcliffe-influenced Gothic, which is most associated with Northanger Abbey. There's no heroine, not really any heroes, and it's set in very masculine environments, mostly the military. But the stories ARE horrid, the way Jane Austen's characters wanted them, and some fairly gruesome. Definitely recommended.

[Karlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically just an old man moderating an undead domestic dispute to amuse some (alive) nobles.

UPDATE: It appears there's actually an extended version of this story which is longer than the 33-page version I just read. I will have to investigate that further.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the book quite interesting, inspired by Schiller´s The Ghost-Seer a little bit. I recommend it.

[Gilbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very confusing tale of tales told by a variety of characters with plot twists and hidden doors and corridors and mysterious comings and goings at all times of the day and night.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was actually a great gothic novel! They can be so dry but a lot happened in the story and it wasn't outrageously long. I definitely recommend if you're looking for a start to the horrible novels!