The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends

by Simon Young

"In the last fifty years, folklorists have amassed an extraordinary corpus of contemporary legends including "the Choking Doberman," "the Eaten Ticket," and "the Vanishing Hitchhiker." But what about the urban legends of the past? These legends and tales have rarely been collected, and when they occasionally appear, they do so as ancestors or precursors of the urban legends of today, rather than as stories in their own right. In The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends, Simon Young fills this gap for British folklore (and for the wider English-speaking world) of the 1800s. Young introduces seventy Victorian urban legends ranging from "Beetle Eyes" to the "Shoplifter's Dilemma" and from "Hands in the Muff" to "the Suicide Club." While a handful of these stories are already known, the vast majority have never been identified, and they have certainly never received scholarly treatment. Young begins the volume with a lengthy introduction assessing nineteenth-century media, emphasizing the importance of the written word to the perpetuation and preservation of these myths. He draws on numerous nineteenth-century books, periodicals, and ephemera, including digitized newspaper archives-particularly the British Newspaper Archive, an exciting new hunting ground for folklorists. The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends will appeal to an academic audience as well as to anyone who is interested in urban legends"--

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Folklore

Unknown Binding

Published July 1, 2022

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Simon Young was awarded a starred First in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from Cambridge University, as well as the Chadwick Prize for Celtic studies. Since then he has lived in Spain, Ireland and Italy. The author of many academic articles, he has also written about the Dark Ages for History Today, the Spectator, and the Guardian.

Reviews

[Maggie May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and well presented. This is a scholarly approach to the subject, but never dry or boring. There are some real wild stories here.

[Kaden Grossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

had a lot fo strange and interesting urban legends.
my god, can you imagine putting bugs on a child's eyes?!
wow.
very interesting read!

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed in the stories. I guess Victorian England's urban legends were a bit bland.

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is essentially a list of Victorian era myths and stories. Many of them are entertaining but the author does not really point to a larger thematic idea.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of urban legends gleaned from period newspapers. This book would be worth reading for the introduction alone, in which the author describes the nature of an urban legend and outlines his process for finding and sorting them. The legends themselves range from the ridiculous to the merely implausible to the I-don't-quite-believe-it-but-would-like-to variety. Some of the legends here are physically impossible, and Young takes great pains to explain the science involved and the exact lengths to which it could go. A few of these chapters were a little disturbing in terms of subject matter, but many centered on human interaction, rather than gore, and were ultimately thought-provoking. People interested in print culture, in newspapers, or in urban legends will almost certainly benefit from this, but Simon Young's matter-of-fact style and eclectic topics will likely entertain any reader. A fun book of stories that didn't really happen . . . or did they?