The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs

by Florence Marryat

First published in 1896, The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs is one of a number of novels in which Florence Marryat uses Spiritualism both for comic effect and to make more serious arguments about gender politics. In this novel, the spirit of a woman murdered by her jealous husband inhabits the body of his second wife and wreaks her revenge.

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

British author and actress, daughter of author Capt. Frederick Marryat (Children of the The New Forest), particularly known for her sensational novels and her involvement with several celebrated spiritual mediums of the late nineteenth century. Her works include There is No Death (1891) and The Spirit World (1894).

Marryat's parents separated when she was young; her childhood was divided between her parents' residences, where she was privately educated.
Shortly before her 21st birthday, she wed Thomas Ross Church, an officer in the Madras staff corps of the British Army in India; they spent the first seven years of their married life traveling India extensively before she returned to England in 1860. They had eight children but divorced in 1879; later that year, Marryat wed Colonel Francis Lean.

At the age of 43, Marryat entered the stage, taking a role in a drama she had written, Her World Against a Lie, in 1881.

Reviews

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

really, somewhere between a 3.5 and a 4. It's a book that works on different levels -- it is a story of ghostly possession, but it would also be quite at home in a study of Victorian New Woman literature of the fin-de-siècle.


everything remotely connected to plot (without spoilers) is here:
https://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/201...

I settled on this book as an October read because I was looking for a novel with a séance, so when I found this one, I was a happy camper. I'm a fangirl of Florence Marryat's novels and this book is one of hers that I hadn't yet read. The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs is certainly one of the most lurid supernatural Victorian novels I've encountered up to now, and it ticks more than just a few of my reader boxes: it is the story of a vengeful ghost, has the feel of a sensation novel cloaked in spiritualist garb but turned completely on its head, and it simultaneously engages topics and themes of Victorian fin-de-siècle New Woman literature. It's also fun -- what more can I ask?

H.G. Wells called this novel "absurd," and considering plot alone it probably is, but there is method to Marryat's madness here as there is in many of her later novels. The novel is delightfully subversive, it makes for fun supernatural reading, and I can't help it -- I am a huge fangirl of novels in which there are séances. I got way,way more than I bargained for here.

Recommended, certainly, especially for aficionados of more obscure Victorian supernatural tales.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so glad I discovered this book. Despite the dark subject material, it's fast paced and an easy read. Marryat's voice is gripping and charming, and I can see how her work was both popular and divisive during her career.