Through the Night: Tales of Shades and Shadows

by Isabella Varley Banks, G. C. Banks (Illustrator)

Through the Night: Tales of Shades and Shadows • interior artwork by G. C. Banks

As well as several excellent Victorian ghost stories, this collection includes entertaining accounts of folklore and the humorous fairy tale, “Larry’s Apprenticeship.” (Some of the tales are narrated in Scots or Irish dialect.)
Contents:
 
• A World Between • short story by Isabella Banks
• The Pride of the Corbyns • (1875) • novelette by Isabella Banks
• Wraith-Haunted • (1869) • short fiction by Isabella Banks
• The Piper's Ghost • short story by Isabella Banks
• St. Cuthbert's Cup • short story by Isabella Banks
• The Fairies' Cradle • short story by Isabella Banks
• My Will • short story by Isabella Banks
• Judgment Deferred • short story by Isabella Banks
• A Dour Weird • short story by Isabella Banks
• The White Woman of Slaith • (1881) • short story by Isabella Banks
• Larry's Apprenticeship • short story by Isabella Banks
• The Fate of the Fosbrookes • (1878) • short story by Isabella Banks
• A New Leaf • short story by Isabella Banks
• The Plainbury Mystery • short story by Isabella Banks

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303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1882

About the author

Isabella Varley Banks, also known as Mrs George Linnaeus Banks or Isabella Varley, was a 19th-century writer of English poetry and novels, born in Manchester, England. She is most widely remembered today for her book The Manchester Man, published in 1876.

Reviews

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Read in an epub found online which is riddled with typos and missing punctuation.)

A collection of stories with a lot of ghosts and some interesting stuff. Banks used other stories and bits of folklore as inspiration, which she carefully details in an appendix. None of it's scary; some of it's amazingly racist; and probably your life will not be poorer for not reading it.

A definite weakness is the constant parade of wimpy Victorian females too pure to breathe air and too delicate of mind for me to want to read about. (Apparently I can take only so much fluttery Victorian modesty, and I reached my limit here.)

Ghosts there are, but most exist simply to appear in odd places at odd times and silently warn folks--often of the death of the person who provided the ghost.

A couple stories with interesting elements. "The White Woman of Slaith" is based on a bit of lore about a ghostly woman who appears and touches the fishing boats doomed to sink; Banks gives her a story and wraps the sightings up in the story of a family. (Though it's so very, very Victorian to have a 19-year-old woman whose betrothed has drowned never, never, ever marry, because her heart is now in the grave--or, actually, you know, in the ocean. sigh Yes, she loved him; but, come on.) And, oh dear, "The Pride of the Corbyns." The good part is the screeching and unseen battle each night in a family mausoleum in which strangers have been placed. (Okay: and the fact that each time a body is to be placed in the mausoleum, a rifle is fired through a grating in the mausoleum, to disperse the gases present from the decomposition of the bodies already there.) But this thing is horrifyingly racist.

It's a readable collection, for the most part. Some stories ("The Fairies’ Cradle"; "The Piper's Ghost") could have been shorter; one ("Wraith-Haunted") becomes unintentionally amusing, as a woman's dearest relatives die one by one in a story I know is supposed to be heart-rending. "Larry's Apprenticeship" has far too much dialect to be a comfortable read.

If you're looking for modesty being rewarded and debauchery being punished and ghosts who aren't really scary, this is your book. But, as I said, probably your life won't be that much less rich because you skipped over this book.