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Late Victorian Gothic Tales
The Victorian fin de siecle has many 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.
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.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Roger Luckhurst
61 books42 followersRoger Luckhurst is a British writer and academic. He is Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Columbia University in 2016. He works on Victorian literature, contemporary literature, Gothic and weird fiction, trauma studies, and speculative/science fiction.
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April 30, 2019
Late Victorian Gothic Tales - Published by Oxford University Press, this volume contains an excellent introductory essay by Roger Luckhurst and a dozen selections from some of the finest authors of the period - Oscar Wilde, Arthur Machen, Henry James, Vernon Lee, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Bithia Mary Croker, Grant Allen, M.P. Shiel, and Jean Lorrain. For the purposes of my review, I will focus on the two Jean Lorrain tales since the French writer is perhaps the least well known of the authors included. Besides which, Jean Lorrain is one of my all time favorites and I jump on any opportunity to share my enthusiasm for his Decadent fiction. Here goes:
MAGIC LANTERN
Two Parisians at a concert of the music of Hector Berlioz. Following a performance of The Damnation of Faust, the narrator complains to his physician friend that modern science has killed poetry and everything else associated with a sense of the fantastic and fantasy. He goes on, “We have an abstruse mathematical treatise inn place of the heart, the appetites of a piglet in the belly, bridles and racing tips in the imagination, and a clockwork movement in the brain.”
This, an expression of a major theme among the fin de siècle Decadents: the prevailing influence of positivism, scientism and skepticism along with the engineers and hack journalists have all but destroyed the French population’s capacity for intuition and refinement so necessary for music, the arts and aesthetic experience.
Deep into the conversation the physician objects to the notion that all is flat and devoid of traces of the supernatural. No, no, he insists, right here in the theater we are surrounded by such horrors as the specters of human heads, vampires, ghouls and witches. When the narrator doubts the truth of such a rash statement, the physician directs his companion to take up his opera-glasses and train them on three unmarried women with chalky complexions and painted faces. He alludes to the list of men who came to a quick end at the hands of these women once these lovelies go their claws into the gentlemen.
Then there is another beautiful madam whose looks and embrace are as deadly as a mechanical mannequin on parade. “To hold between one’s arms that rotating Sidonie, to run into those lips, as cold as lips of waz: does the idea not make you shudder?” And up in the balcony, wives of the merchantile Barrons, “all of them morphinated, caterised, dosed, drugged by psychotherapeutic novels and ether: medicated, anaemiated, androgynes, hysterics and consumptives.” To the increased horror and stupefaction of the narrator, the physician's examples continue, one after the other after the other.
The Magic Lantern is vintage Jean Lorrain, the author at the top of the list of French Decadents in exploring the prevailing urban landscapes of perversity, debauchery, deviance, kinkiness, and out-and-out weirdness.
THE SPECTRAL HAND
“When the world was rocked by the scandal of the murder of the Comtesse d’Orthyse, my friend Jacques and I were by no means astonished as everyone else.” So begins the unnamed narrator’s haunting tale recounting the revelation of how exactly he and his friend Jacques knew who would put the revolver to the Comesse’s heart and pull the trigger.
It all began two years prior when the now dead lady was the widow of the Marquis de Strada and in the full flower of her beauty, a lady famous for her flamboyance, elegance and exquisite aesthetic taste. Her gowns made from rare fabrics brought about a revolution among Parisian couturiers. “In all the clubs and boudoirs of the city people discussed reports of her dressing-room, whose lacquered green chairs were each encrusted with a trefoil of diamonds, and whose Dresden china bath-tub, supported by three bronze Japanese frogs, were the epitome of symbolic extravagance.” (I include this quote to highlight Jean Lorrain’s opulent writing style on display from beginning to end. My retelling is merely a reviewer’s thin gruel.) Anyway, in a word, the Comtesse d’Orthyse’s drawing room was the most cherished destination for artists, writers, musicians and literati throughout all of Europe.
The narrator’s story takes place during an evening at the home of the Marquise with four guests present: himself, Jacques, Henri Tramsel and poet Pierre de Lisse. The conversation revolved around literature and the arts with a particular focus on the nightmarish paintings of Breughel and Hokusai.
After dinner, all retired to the drawing-room where the Marquise recalled an event from her youth touching on occult themes. A discussion ensued revolving around magic, spiritualism and the fantastic. When someone mentioned table-turning, the Marquise sprang to her feet and rang for her servant to bring a small round table to the room.
But, alas, when their attempts to persuade the spirits to tilt the table proved fruitless, the short-tempered Marquise became extremely irritated which prompted Henri Tramsel to propose they should try another method he called “the spectral hand.” When asked what he meant by that, Henri Tramel assured all present this was the most certain means by which the living might enter into conversation with the dead. He went on to warn everyone such an experiment was dangerous and required courage and strength of character.
The harrowing yarn continues. Unbeknownst to the others in the room, one of the participants sees ghosts and unfolding future tragedy. Up for a beautiful Gothic tale, fin de siècle-style? If so, this Jean Lorrain is for you.
November 23, 2015
I thoroughly enjoyed all of the stories in this collection! Highly recommend this for fellow fans of Gothic fiction!
December 29, 2018
*Read for Class*
January 7, 2020
Stories from the top tier... 5 stars
This is a collection of twelve stories from some of the greatest writers of Gothic, all first published in the 1890s. Many of them are very well known and I suspect that most or all of them are probably available to read online. But the joy of an anthology like this one is the expert guidance provided by the editor, first in selecting and organising the stories in a way that allows the reader to see how the genre connects and flows, and then in providing an informative introduction and notes.
The editor of this one is Roger Luckhurst, whom I first encountered as the editor of a Lovecraft collection a few years ago, sparking my interest in Lovecraft in particular and weird fiction in general. I was later happy to encounter him again as the editor of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, when his introduction put that book into its literary and historical context for me, adding a great deal to my understanding and enjoyment of it. So I knew I’d be in safe hands with this collection.
Luckhurst tells us that there have been three main waves of Gothic writing, in the 18th century, then again in the late Victorian period, and now, with the likes of Stephen King reviving the genre. Each wave made it anew, though, influenced by contemporary concerns as well as by other styles and movements in the literary world of their time. He talks about the crossover in the late Victorian era between the styles of Gothic and Decadence, and about the influence on the genre of anxieties over colonialism, the growth of science and pseudo-sciences, spiritualism and psychic research, and so on. All of this means that the stories in a sense stop being merely individual entertainments and instead become part of something larger: part of the contemporary literature that casts light on its society and in turn influences it. As always, I found his introduction both informative and enjoyable, happily free of the academic jargon that can sometimes infest these things and therefore accessible to any interested reader.
But what of the stories, I hear you ask? I gave five of them five stars, another five got four stars, and the remaining two got 3½ each, so a very high standard overall. As it should be, given that most of them are from top tier writers. There’s Henry James and Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen and Oscar Wilde, and two from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Then there are several names that were new to me, though I gather from the intro that they would be familiar to real aficionados – Vernon Lee, BM Croker, Grant Allen and MP Shiels. A further two from Jean Lorrain take us over to France and into the heart of the Decadent style.
An excellent collection, especially for a relative newcomer to the genre since it includes some of the very best, but the introduction and notes make it a great choice too for people who may already know some of the stories but would like to know more about their context. Highly recommended.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford World’s Classics.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
This is a collection of twelve stories from some of the greatest writers of Gothic, all first published in the 1890s. Many of them are very well known and I suspect that most or all of them are probably available to read online. But the joy of an anthology like this one is the expert guidance provided by the editor, first in selecting and organising the stories in a way that allows the reader to see how the genre connects and flows, and then in providing an informative introduction and notes.
The editor of this one is Roger Luckhurst, whom I first encountered as the editor of a Lovecraft collection a few years ago, sparking my interest in Lovecraft in particular and weird fiction in general. I was later happy to encounter him again as the editor of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, when his introduction put that book into its literary and historical context for me, adding a great deal to my understanding and enjoyment of it. So I knew I’d be in safe hands with this collection.
Luckhurst tells us that there have been three main waves of Gothic writing, in the 18th century, then again in the late Victorian period, and now, with the likes of Stephen King reviving the genre. Each wave made it anew, though, influenced by contemporary concerns as well as by other styles and movements in the literary world of their time. He talks about the crossover in the late Victorian era between the styles of Gothic and Decadence, and about the influence on the genre of anxieties over colonialism, the growth of science and pseudo-sciences, spiritualism and psychic research, and so on. All of this means that the stories in a sense stop being merely individual entertainments and instead become part of something larger: part of the contemporary literature that casts light on its society and in turn influences it. As always, I found his introduction both informative and enjoyable, happily free of the academic jargon that can sometimes infest these things and therefore accessible to any interested reader.
But what of the stories, I hear you ask? I gave five of them five stars, another five got four stars, and the remaining two got 3½ each, so a very high standard overall. As it should be, given that most of them are from top tier writers. There’s Henry James and Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen and Oscar Wilde, and two from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Then there are several names that were new to me, though I gather from the intro that they would be familiar to real aficionados – Vernon Lee, BM Croker, Grant Allen and MP Shiels. A further two from Jean Lorrain take us over to France and into the heart of the Decadent style.
An excellent collection, especially for a relative newcomer to the genre since it includes some of the very best, but the introduction and notes make it a great choice too for people who may already know some of the stories but would like to know more about their context. Highly recommended.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford World’s Classics.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
January 5, 2012
I originally found this from the library because it includes Machen's The Great God Pan, which is on my to read -list. It's great though that I also get to read other gothic tales, too. Perfect Christmas read in my opinion (alongside Dickens, of course). There's usually two words anyway that make me want to read the book immediately: Victorian and gothic. Not sure about late Victorian though.
* * *
Ok, I somehow got confused with the term late Victorian. Of course I've read stuff related to this area of literary history (Dracula, Picture of Dorian Gray etc.) and have loved almost every single one of them. I just didn't realise that they can be classified as something so particular. This collection is brilliant, including well-known authors and authors who at least I have never heard about. Among the weakest stories was Dionea, it was excruciatingly boring and uninteresting. Among the best was Lot No. 249, The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor and Pallinghurst Barrow.
All those I liked were simple and traditional ghost stories with a creepy atmosphere. By outlining the basic themes of the Gothic revival, the introduction made me understand that the themes in particular are the reason why I love this branch of literature. Decadence, imperialism, Spiritualism, fascination with ancient Egypt, naturalizing the supernatural (Frankenstein), supernatural creatures (mummies, ghosts, vampires, monsters), emergence of new sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology), theory of degeneration (explaining the animalism of the criminal classes, female hysterics and the insane, and the new art forms like Impressionism, Symbolism and Naturalism), and the overall atmosphere of dark opium and absinthe-fumed brothels with lace curtains.
Now the only thing left for me to do, is to write down the select bibliography and all the authors that I'm interested in reading more from. That should grow my to read -list relatively well. Maybe too well...
* * *
Ok, I somehow got confused with the term late Victorian. Of course I've read stuff related to this area of literary history (Dracula, Picture of Dorian Gray etc.) and have loved almost every single one of them. I just didn't realise that they can be classified as something so particular. This collection is brilliant, including well-known authors and authors who at least I have never heard about. Among the weakest stories was Dionea, it was excruciatingly boring and uninteresting. Among the best was Lot No. 249, The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor and Pallinghurst Barrow.
All those I liked were simple and traditional ghost stories with a creepy atmosphere. By outlining the basic themes of the Gothic revival, the introduction made me understand that the themes in particular are the reason why I love this branch of literature. Decadence, imperialism, Spiritualism, fascination with ancient Egypt, naturalizing the supernatural (Frankenstein), supernatural creatures (mummies, ghosts, vampires, monsters), emergence of new sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology), theory of degeneration (explaining the animalism of the criminal classes, female hysterics and the insane, and the new art forms like Impressionism, Symbolism and Naturalism), and the overall atmosphere of dark opium and absinthe-fumed brothels with lace curtains.
Now the only thing left for me to do, is to write down the select bibliography and all the authors that I'm interested in reading more from. That should grow my to read -list relatively well. Maybe too well...
April 13, 2024
this is the result of Victorian writers being high on opium and having too much time on their hands
April 2, 2012
The introduction has some of the best, most concise descriptions and explanations of Gothic writing that I've ever read.
Some examples:
"....genre is less a set of fixed narratives and images and more a....way of thinking"
"Gothic was everything that offended the neoclassical taste...disordered, dark and labyrinthine"
" the gothic ' was an attempt to blend the ancient and the modern" Horace Walpole.
"...the undamming of dark forces that rush into and insidiously undermine the order of everyday life"
"...as the enlightenment project became the Machine Age...the world regulated and disenchanted by the routines of industrial life, the Gothic could take on a positive valance of everything that was being lost: passion, belief, spirit, individual eccentricity, craft"
"The Gothic repeatedly stages moments of transgression" ( alive/dead, animal/man, individual ego/the other)
This collection being about late Victorian Gothic stories it emphasizes not only the ongoing disenchantment through technological advance but also the Spiritualism movement and the rise of decadent culture (as in Baudelaire and Wilde).
Every story is strong and some of the best ones are toward the end. The story Magic Lantern was a real revelation, it could almost be a contemporary story in its approach.
Highly recommended.
Some examples:
"....genre is less a set of fixed narratives and images and more a....way of thinking"
"Gothic was everything that offended the neoclassical taste...disordered, dark and labyrinthine"
" the gothic ' was an attempt to blend the ancient and the modern" Horace Walpole.
"...the undamming of dark forces that rush into and insidiously undermine the order of everyday life"
"...as the enlightenment project became the Machine Age...the world regulated and disenchanted by the routines of industrial life, the Gothic could take on a positive valance of everything that was being lost: passion, belief, spirit, individual eccentricity, craft"
"The Gothic repeatedly stages moments of transgression" ( alive/dead, animal/man, individual ego/the other)
This collection being about late Victorian Gothic stories it emphasizes not only the ongoing disenchantment through technological advance but also the Spiritualism movement and the rise of decadent culture (as in Baudelaire and Wilde).
Every story is strong and some of the best ones are toward the end. The story Magic Lantern was a real revelation, it could almost be a contemporary story in its approach.
Highly recommended.
January 24, 2009
I'm finding this book easier to read than most contemporary writing. Is that bad?
July 19, 2022
“In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and knitted together with withes and strands of ivy, as though the old mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather.”
This collection fell extremely flat for me, with my average rating falling to around 2.8. I rounded my rating up to 3 stars purely because of the three stories in the collection that I read that were 4 star reads (Lee’s ‘Dionea’, Croker’s ‘The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor’ snd Conan-Doyle’s ‘Lot No. 249’). The last few stories went straight over my head and for the majority of the collection I felt like I was forcing myself to read so I could feel the satisfaction of finishing it, which definitely wasn’t helped by the colonialist racism that was perpetuated throughout. However, the stories I rated 4 stars were fantastic, ticking all the boxes of what I constitute as an immersive Victorian Gothic read.
This collection fell extremely flat for me, with my average rating falling to around 2.8. I rounded my rating up to 3 stars purely because of the three stories in the collection that I read that were 4 star reads (Lee’s ‘Dionea’, Croker’s ‘The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor’ snd Conan-Doyle’s ‘Lot No. 249’). The last few stories went straight over my head and for the majority of the collection I felt like I was forcing myself to read so I could feel the satisfaction of finishing it, which definitely wasn’t helped by the colonialist racism that was perpetuated throughout. However, the stories I rated 4 stars were fantastic, ticking all the boxes of what I constitute as an immersive Victorian Gothic read.
November 19, 2021
I am slightly miffed that a collection of late Gothic stories included only two female authors, considering women's prolixity in this genre. That being said, this is a perfect October read and a pretty informative book on the Gothic as a whole, especially the second-wave which found its summit in the latter half of the 19th century. It's a good mix of Irish, Canadian and Anglo-Indian writers that tackle the terrors of modern society. As always, what I love about the Gothic is that it's such a liminal kind of writing that touches upon issues or race, colonialism, queerness, morality, mythology, sexuality etc. It combines tradition and modernism, tropes and ambiguity, fear and pleasure. It just rocks.
Ratings for each story:
Vernon Lee [Violet Paget], Dionea - 7/10. Starting off with one of the gals. The narrator of this story is particularly interesting since he is obsessed with the female form and the old Greek gods and he's a doctor, to boot. Gothic narrators are so perverse and cool. Dionea is pretty badass too. The ending made me shiver, but the story as a whole was a bit underwhelming. Points for capitalizing on racial fear (Dionea is a woman of color, of course).
Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - 9/10. Not a shocking or gruesome tale, but Wilde's style is effortlessly enjoyable and brilliant. The dark humor makes the whole story, because if this had been written in a tragic key, I doubt it would still be memorable. I also dig that pun in Savile's name (savile - civil, eh, eh?)
Henry James, Sir Edmund Orme - 7/10. A creepy and subversive ghost story, especially if you consider what is left out of the text. As a whole, it's perfectly serviceable, nothing impressive, but that subtext - oh, man, that subtext. I did not so much enjoy it as I kept wondering about it for days (again, watch out for perverse narrator).
Rudyard Kipling, The Mark of the Beast - 7/10. The real horror in this story is, of course, the racial Other. Not to spoil much, but two white men have to torture an Indian leper. Yeah.
B.M. Croker, The Dak Bungalow at Dakor - 6/10. Damn it, this is our only other female author and her story is a dud. Honestly, it might be the weakest of the bunch, solely because it does not go beyond "Indians murder white men, bungalow is haunted". I mean, I suppose you could infer that the murder at the center of the tale is an indirect sin of colonialism, but the writing and framing of the story do not encourage deeper readings. Not very thrilling either. Sorry, Bithia.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Lot No. 249 - 7/10. I would have given it more points, but this mummy story is quite anti-climactic. The set-up is ingenious. A brilliant but mad student of Oriental languages finds a mummy and manages somehow to revive it and use it to harm his enemies. However, the ending is too clean-cut and dry and our main protagonist saves the day without any lasting moral or emotional repercussions. Still, a fun read.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case of Lady Sannox - 8/10. Now this is how you do it. This is a climactic ending I really did not expect. Doyle plays with expectations perfectly. It's short and sweet, but absolutely chilling.
Grant Allen, Pallinghurst Barrow - 7/10. A pretty inventive take on the ghost story. Actually, I think it's a ghost-fairy story, which is quite something. And it's legitimately scary. Except, once again, the protagonist has a bit of an easy escape at the end.
Jean Lorrain, Magic Lantern - 8/10. A very short story written by a French dandy. Nothing much happens, in fact it's a kind of meta-text on the genre and a detailed description of society's modern monsters. But the language and the humor are delicious. And it is quite creepy.
Jean Lorrain, The Spectral Hand - 7/10. A pretty routine ghost story, where the specter is more benevolent than anything else. Nothing much happens except, y'know, the signs of death are everywhere; we just don't pay attention.
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan - 10/10. Holy Shit. Everything I heard about this story, the praise and the rich commentary - all warranted. This is a hell of a journey, intensely creepy, downright blood-curdling, but at the same time, enchanting and even melancholy. This is what Dionea was striving to be, in terms of mythological horror. I will say I wanted more out of that ending, but given the format of the story, I suppose it fits perfectly and leaves you wanting more.
M.P. Shiel, Vaila - 7/10. Probably the most frustrating tale of the bunch. It's a story of natural and supernatural horror, Shakespearean revenge...and the dangers of building your home by the sea. The language is to die for, I mean this man has somehow swallowed and refined several English and French dictionaries. That being said, this is Gothic at its most unrelenting and unpleasant. It's not a story you'll enjoy, but it is haunting and upsetting all the same. I just need more fun in my Gothic, so I can't give it more points. Tedious, but remarkable, if that makes sense.
Ratings for each story:
Vernon Lee [Violet Paget], Dionea - 7/10. Starting off with one of the gals. The narrator of this story is particularly interesting since he is obsessed with the female form and the old Greek gods and he's a doctor, to boot. Gothic narrators are so perverse and cool. Dionea is pretty badass too. The ending made me shiver, but the story as a whole was a bit underwhelming. Points for capitalizing on racial fear (Dionea is a woman of color, of course).
Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - 9/10. Not a shocking or gruesome tale, but Wilde's style is effortlessly enjoyable and brilliant. The dark humor makes the whole story, because if this had been written in a tragic key, I doubt it would still be memorable. I also dig that pun in Savile's name (savile - civil, eh, eh?)
Henry James, Sir Edmund Orme - 7/10. A creepy and subversive ghost story, especially if you consider what is left out of the text. As a whole, it's perfectly serviceable, nothing impressive, but that subtext - oh, man, that subtext. I did not so much enjoy it as I kept wondering about it for days (again, watch out for perverse narrator).
Rudyard Kipling, The Mark of the Beast - 7/10. The real horror in this story is, of course, the racial Other. Not to spoil much, but two white men have to torture an Indian leper. Yeah.
B.M. Croker, The Dak Bungalow at Dakor - 6/10. Damn it, this is our only other female author and her story is a dud. Honestly, it might be the weakest of the bunch, solely because it does not go beyond "Indians murder white men, bungalow is haunted". I mean, I suppose you could infer that the murder at the center of the tale is an indirect sin of colonialism, but the writing and framing of the story do not encourage deeper readings. Not very thrilling either. Sorry, Bithia.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Lot No. 249 - 7/10. I would have given it more points, but this mummy story is quite anti-climactic. The set-up is ingenious. A brilliant but mad student of Oriental languages finds a mummy and manages somehow to revive it and use it to harm his enemies. However, the ending is too clean-cut and dry and our main protagonist saves the day without any lasting moral or emotional repercussions. Still, a fun read.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case of Lady Sannox - 8/10. Now this is how you do it. This is a climactic ending I really did not expect. Doyle plays with expectations perfectly. It's short and sweet, but absolutely chilling.
Grant Allen, Pallinghurst Barrow - 7/10. A pretty inventive take on the ghost story. Actually, I think it's a ghost-fairy story, which is quite something. And it's legitimately scary. Except, once again, the protagonist has a bit of an easy escape at the end.
Jean Lorrain, Magic Lantern - 8/10. A very short story written by a French dandy. Nothing much happens, in fact it's a kind of meta-text on the genre and a detailed description of society's modern monsters. But the language and the humor are delicious. And it is quite creepy.
Jean Lorrain, The Spectral Hand - 7/10. A pretty routine ghost story, where the specter is more benevolent than anything else. Nothing much happens except, y'know, the signs of death are everywhere; we just don't pay attention.
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan - 10/10. Holy Shit. Everything I heard about this story, the praise and the rich commentary - all warranted. This is a hell of a journey, intensely creepy, downright blood-curdling, but at the same time, enchanting and even melancholy. This is what Dionea was striving to be, in terms of mythological horror. I will say I wanted more out of that ending, but given the format of the story, I suppose it fits perfectly and leaves you wanting more.
M.P. Shiel, Vaila - 7/10. Probably the most frustrating tale of the bunch. It's a story of natural and supernatural horror, Shakespearean revenge...and the dangers of building your home by the sea. The language is to die for, I mean this man has somehow swallowed and refined several English and French dictionaries. That being said, this is Gothic at its most unrelenting and unpleasant. It's not a story you'll enjoy, but it is haunting and upsetting all the same. I just need more fun in my Gothic, so I can't give it more points. Tedious, but remarkable, if that makes sense.
Currently reading
November 17, 2021In order to get into the Halloween spirit, I have decided to read way too much Gothic fiction! I am probably not going to finish anywhere near as many books as I think I will.
DIONEA by Vernon Lee--4 stars
#DioneaDeservedBetter
Yeah, Dionea is literally just a girl. I don't get why the narrator keeps implying she's serpentine/evil/a seductress ho/whatever. I mean, she's eighteen?? (Of course, the fact that she's Middle Eastern definitely has something to do with it.) The writing is absolutely beautiful, though, and I love the implication that Dionea might be an actual Greek god. I love that a lot.
LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME by Oscar Wilde--5 stars
Wilde has never failed me yet. It took me a while to get into this one, but once I did it was just. A ride. It's hilarious and the prose is absolutely gorgeous in places??
SIR EDMUND ORME by Henry James--3.5 stars
A good old-fashioned ghost story! I really liked Charlotte a lot. The ending felt a bit anticlimactic to me for some reason, though.
THE MARK OF THE BEAST by Rudyard Kipling--1 star
It's one thing for a story to be gross and unpleasant, but this was also racist, gross, and unpleasant, so. Not particularly to my tastes.
DIONEA by Vernon Lee--4 stars
#DioneaDeservedBetter
Yeah, Dionea is literally just a girl. I don't get why the narrator keeps implying she's serpentine/evil/a seductress ho/whatever. I mean, she's eighteen?? (Of course, the fact that she's Middle Eastern definitely has something to do with it.) The writing is absolutely beautiful, though, and I love the implication that Dionea might be an actual Greek god. I love that a lot.
LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME by Oscar Wilde--5 stars
Anything like personal violence was extremely distasteful to him, and besides, he was very anxious not to murder Lady Clementina in any way that might attract public attention, as he hated the idea of being lionised at Lady Windermere’s, or seeing his name figuring in the paragraphs of vulgar society-newspapers.
Wilde has never failed me yet. It took me a while to get into this one, but once I did it was just. A ride. It's hilarious and the prose is absolutely gorgeous in places??
SIR EDMUND ORME by Henry James--3.5 stars
A good old-fashioned ghost story! I really liked Charlotte a lot. The ending felt a bit anticlimactic to me for some reason, though.
THE MARK OF THE BEAST by Rudyard Kipling--1 star
It's one thing for a story to be gross and unpleasant, but this was also racist, gross, and unpleasant, so. Not particularly to my tastes.
January 6, 2016
Okay, this is better than The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. I enjoyed almost all of these, with the unfortunate exception of the last, "Vaila", a longish story which attempts to recount The Fall of the House of Usher with sound. Other than that, the stories are decent (like Henry James' "Sir Edmund Orme"), including good ones by Rudyard Kipling ("The Mark of the Beast") and Arthur Conan Doyle ("Lot No. 249" and "The Case of Lady Sannox"). I was also surprised to enjoy Oscar Wilde's "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime", which was more dark humor, and B.M. Croker's "The Dak Bungalow at Dakor". Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" was also kind of cool in a Lovecraftian way, although it carried on a bit long.
April 15, 2024
Ranging from excellent to completely unhinged.
November 25, 2025
So this has taken me a while to get through as I've been dipping in and out of this story collection.
There are some hits and misses here, a very mixed bag.
Many of the stories are quite unsettling and provide a good dose of creeping unease. The writing can be flowery and protracted as is to be expected from Victorian writers, but it is entertaining nonetheless.
I'm just debating whether to keep hold of this title and whether I'd be likely to read any of the stories again. I'll keep it on the backburner shelf for now methinks.
3.5 stars
There are some hits and misses here, a very mixed bag.
Many of the stories are quite unsettling and provide a good dose of creeping unease. The writing can be flowery and protracted as is to be expected from Victorian writers, but it is entertaining nonetheless.
I'm just debating whether to keep hold of this title and whether I'd be likely to read any of the stories again. I'll keep it on the backburner shelf for now methinks.
3.5 stars
April 1, 2023
Really hit and miss. Great introduction to the period by Roger Luckhurst. Some really good stories and a couple of real clangers.
September 30, 2017
3.5 stars
January 4, 2022
some of these are GREAT, some are good, and some are just whatever. So, a fun collection overall, but not equally strong throughout.
March 2, 2020
I've been reading a lot of literature from this period recently, but this is a unique volume. It includes more than just "ghost stories," but tales from this transformative period which reflect its most prominent characteristics. I liked that it included some of the Tales from the Empire, along with others which reflect an element of increasing globalization, and a veritable lack of comfort with what the colonizers were encountering. There is certainly an element of "Orientalizing" in the stories, which are replete with an otherworldly exoticism that's also somewhat uncomfortable for modern readers, but perhaps for a different reason.
The volume is overall, as some other reviewers have noted, a collection of those things, some seemingly mundane, which disturbed Victorian authors and readers, who were increasingly encountering a changing world. As the introduction noted, the literature, like society and the prevailing culture and attitudes during the day, were transgressive and challenging of an old established order, which changed forever with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. It's also something of an ominous warning of what was to come in the 20th century, just a few short years away, and the atrocity which no one could have contemplated.
I included some of the most important passages from the introduction below, as I think they do an admirable job of describing and defining "Gothic," a term not well understood in the modern sense, aside perhaps from the systematic challenging and transgression of borders and boundaries, where rules break down and life is lived in the margins. This is a worthwhile volume with some truly spooky and unsettling tales, well worth a read if you're a fan of suspense fiction: it certainly highlights the anxieties and insecurities of people of the period, who faced an evermore speedily changing world.
--------Important Passages--------
"The Gothic repeatedly stages moments of transgression because it is obsessed with establishing and policing borders, delineating strict categories of being. The enduring icons of the Gothic are entities that breach the absolute distinctions between life and death (ghosts, vampires, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein's creature) or between human and beast (werewolves and other animalistic regressions, the creatures spliced together by Dr. Moreau) or which threaten the integrity of the individual ego and the exercise of will by merging with another (Jeckyll and Hyde, the persecuting double, the Mesmerist who holds victims in his or her power). Ostensibly, conclusions reinstate fixed borders, re-secure autonomy, and destroy any intolerable occupants of these twilight zones.
"The most successful monsters overdetermine these transgressions to become, in Judith Halberstam's evocative phrase, 'technologies of monstrosity' that condense and process different and even contradictory anxieties about category and border. Some critics hold that the genre speaks to universal, primitive taboos about the very foundational elements of what it means to be human, yet the ebb and flow of the Gothic across the modern period invites more historical readings. Indeed, one of the principal border breaches in the Gothic is history itself- the insidious leakage of the pre-modern past into the skeptical, allegedly enlightened present. The Gothic, Robert Mighall suggests, can be thought of as a way of relating to the past and its legacies.
"We can think about this in fairly abstract ways: the ghost, for instance, is structurally a stubborn trace of the past that persists into the present and demands a historical understanding if it is to be laid to rest. Similarly, Sigmund Freud defined the feeling of the uncanny as the shiver of realizing that modern reason has merely repressed rather than replaced primitive superstition. 'All supposedly educated people have ceased to believe officially that the dead can become visible as spirits', yet Freud suspected that at times 'almost all of us think as savages do on this topic.' This return to pre-modern beliefs was itself the product of thinking of human subjectivity as a history of developmental layers that could be stripped away in an instant of dread, returning us to a 'savage' state."
The volume is overall, as some other reviewers have noted, a collection of those things, some seemingly mundane, which disturbed Victorian authors and readers, who were increasingly encountering a changing world. As the introduction noted, the literature, like society and the prevailing culture and attitudes during the day, were transgressive and challenging of an old established order, which changed forever with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. It's also something of an ominous warning of what was to come in the 20th century, just a few short years away, and the atrocity which no one could have contemplated.
I included some of the most important passages from the introduction below, as I think they do an admirable job of describing and defining "Gothic," a term not well understood in the modern sense, aside perhaps from the systematic challenging and transgression of borders and boundaries, where rules break down and life is lived in the margins. This is a worthwhile volume with some truly spooky and unsettling tales, well worth a read if you're a fan of suspense fiction: it certainly highlights the anxieties and insecurities of people of the period, who faced an evermore speedily changing world.
--------Important Passages--------
"The Gothic repeatedly stages moments of transgression because it is obsessed with establishing and policing borders, delineating strict categories of being. The enduring icons of the Gothic are entities that breach the absolute distinctions between life and death (ghosts, vampires, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein's creature) or between human and beast (werewolves and other animalistic regressions, the creatures spliced together by Dr. Moreau) or which threaten the integrity of the individual ego and the exercise of will by merging with another (Jeckyll and Hyde, the persecuting double, the Mesmerist who holds victims in his or her power). Ostensibly, conclusions reinstate fixed borders, re-secure autonomy, and destroy any intolerable occupants of these twilight zones.
"The most successful monsters overdetermine these transgressions to become, in Judith Halberstam's evocative phrase, 'technologies of monstrosity' that condense and process different and even contradictory anxieties about category and border. Some critics hold that the genre speaks to universal, primitive taboos about the very foundational elements of what it means to be human, yet the ebb and flow of the Gothic across the modern period invites more historical readings. Indeed, one of the principal border breaches in the Gothic is history itself- the insidious leakage of the pre-modern past into the skeptical, allegedly enlightened present. The Gothic, Robert Mighall suggests, can be thought of as a way of relating to the past and its legacies.
"We can think about this in fairly abstract ways: the ghost, for instance, is structurally a stubborn trace of the past that persists into the present and demands a historical understanding if it is to be laid to rest. Similarly, Sigmund Freud defined the feeling of the uncanny as the shiver of realizing that modern reason has merely repressed rather than replaced primitive superstition. 'All supposedly educated people have ceased to believe officially that the dead can become visible as spirits', yet Freud suspected that at times 'almost all of us think as savages do on this topic.' This return to pre-modern beliefs was itself the product of thinking of human subjectivity as a history of developmental layers that could be stripped away in an instant of dread, returning us to a 'savage' state."
August 27, 2012
A somewhat irregular collection of short stories from the last decade of the nineteenth century. The standouts, all of which possess a bizarre and horrifying Lovecraftian flavor, are “Pallinghurst Barrow” by Grant Allen, “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen, and “Vaila” by M.P. Shiel. These all feature stunningly eloquent passages and concepts which could only have come from those tormented by endless, nightmarish dreams. On a lesser but still very beautiful level is “Dionea” by Vernon Lee, and “The Case of Lady Sannox” by Arthur Conan Doyle has a decent pulp-style twist. (His other story, “Lot No. 249”, intimates horror well though it is weak on plot.) The others are mainly disappointing in their endings, which settle back down into the dullest conventionality instead of breaking through the barriers they constantly hint at. Overall, it is a good exposure to the better authors, and even the lesser stories, especially when read in sequence, are quite evocative.
April 4, 2016
I've got very mixed feeling about this one. I liked the stories by Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle best. It's not surprising that these were the easiest to follow and the most entertaining. But the last two stories, by M.P. Shiel and Arthur Machen, had me utterly confused. Overall, this is a good place to start if you want to get a feel for the wide variety of Victorian gothic tales out there. However, I'll be sticking to short stories by Wilde and Doyle in the future.
April 18, 2019
I adore Gothic Fiction. My favourite stories from this anthology are:
'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' (Oscar Wilde) - a murder story with a gothic twist
'Lot 249' (Arthur Conan Doyle)- a horror story about an Egyptian Mummy set in one of England's most classic landmarks, Oxford University
'Mark of the Beast' (Rudyard Kipling) - a horror story about imperialism and the feared effects it can have on the European body
'The Magic Lantern' (Vernon Lee)
'The Spectral Hand' (Vernon Lee)
'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' (Oscar Wilde) - a murder story with a gothic twist
'Lot 249' (Arthur Conan Doyle)- a horror story about an Egyptian Mummy set in one of England's most classic landmarks, Oxford University
'Mark of the Beast' (Rudyard Kipling) - a horror story about imperialism and the feared effects it can have on the European body
'The Magic Lantern' (Vernon Lee)
'The Spectral Hand' (Vernon Lee)
November 17, 2014
Not a great selection. Or at least, not a very entertaining selection, but a great selection if you want examples of Victorians seemed to prefer ornately overwrought, convoluted description and absurd amounts of classical references and whatnot instead of decent plot and narrative. A few fairly evocative tales, and interesting historically, but mostly decidedly laboured.
June 7, 2019
A shift back in time gives a different perspective on tales of the strange and supernatural. The genres weren't quite so specialised and there was a more porous barrier between the real and spirit world. Credulity, I'd say, was more elastic. A perfect time, so, to spin yarns of demons, ghosties, and derring do. Arthur Machen's Great God Pan reeks of the contrasts between Victorian sensibility and the horror of the occult. Oscar Wilde's contribution is not in Dorian Grey mood, but more Lady Windermere territory in Lord Arthur Saville's crime. Hilarious and fascinating. There is also Arthur Conan Doyle and the unremitting tedium of Henry James. A mixed bag in terms of narrative and story, well worth investigating for that constant Victorian atmosphere, the ornate language, the meticulous social niceties, the different pace and structure to the world; and that all pervasive dim awareness of inevitable change. Keep it by your elbow to dip in.
December 8, 2021
This is a collection of tales that revolve around the supernatural that were written at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Since the Gothic tradition and the Decadent style of the late Victorian era often intersected some of the stories have elements of both. The authors include Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James and Vernon Lee among others.
For me the best were by Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. Lord Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde was really funny. The worst was Vaila by the Decadent author M P Shiel which was a chore to read. A number of other reviewers have agreed about this story.
As usual with Oxford World Classics titles, the book includes a helpful Introduction a Select Bibliography, a Chronology and Explanatory Notes.
I would recommend the book (best to skip Vaila) particularly if you like short stories with a Gothic flavor.
For me the best were by Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. Lord Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde was really funny. The worst was Vaila by the Decadent author M P Shiel which was a chore to read. A number of other reviewers have agreed about this story.
As usual with Oxford World Classics titles, the book includes a helpful Introduction a Select Bibliography, a Chronology and Explanatory Notes.
I would recommend the book (best to skip Vaila) particularly if you like short stories with a Gothic flavor.
Read
September 1, 2025I’ve had a good time reading or rereading the stories in Roger Luckhurst’s anthology of “Late Victorian Gothic Tales,” part of the admirable Oxford World’s Classics series. Not surprisingly, Henry James’s “Sir Edmund Orme” and Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” are among the best, along with Kipling’s colonialist yarn “The Mark of the Beast,” a couple of neat items by Arthur Conan Doyle, and Oscar Wilde’s excellent “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” a splendidly mordant and ironic piece. Other writers include Vernon Lee, whose “Dionea” gets the collection off to a weak start, and a few more with varying degrees of skill. And then there’s M.P. Shiel, whose hugely florid “Vaila,” reprinted in more or less its original form, is every bit as unhinged as Luckhurst says. In all, a very good assortment of vintage weird tales. Recommended.
October 26, 2017
With a long and detailed introduction as well as a long list of resources, this collection stands up as a good mix of stories from a very specific slice of time. I appreciated that the 12 stories/novellas here included offerings from both male and female authors - some well-known (e.g. Kipling, Wilde, Doyle) and some I'd not come across before (Bithia Mary Croker). The general collection gives a good sense of the atmosphere of the genre of a whole as well as the 10-year slot that the stories here fit into. Pick this up if you're at all interested in Gothic literature, appreciative of late 19th-century writers, or want to get a little more background to forerunners like Poe or later authors like H. P. Lovecraft.
May 8, 2022
Hmm... this was an uneven and quite small collection. I mean, I do love good Gothic short stories, but for the ones I really enjoyed, I can probably just find an audio recording of them. The subjects did run the gambit: meta horror, seances, girl demons/daughters of Greek gods (perhaps?) washed ashore to wreck havoc in a nunnery/small fishing village (can you tell this one was my favorite?), vengeful phantoms, even a Fae light story tossed in for good measure. Here are the ones that intrigued me:
*"Dionea"-Vernon Lee
*'Sir Edmund Orme"-Henry James
*"Magic Lantern" and "The Spectral Hand"-Jean Lorrain
*"The Great God Pan"-Arthur Machen
Yeah, the list is small, but so was the collection. This will be off to a good home.
*"Dionea"-Vernon Lee
*'Sir Edmund Orme"-Henry James
*"Magic Lantern" and "The Spectral Hand"-Jean Lorrain
*"The Great God Pan"-Arthur Machen
Yeah, the list is small, but so was the collection. This will be off to a good home.
November 9, 2020
Unless your gothic literatures #1 fan I'd suggest reading the tales seperately and between other projects. I found most of the stories interesting and a few of them very enjoyable. But there were also a fair few that I found tiring to read and by the time I'd gotten into the flow of the writing and the style the story would quickly be ending! I also straight up disliked the final tale Valia. Dionea and Great God Pan (both of which I had previously read) are, in my opinion, the two strongest and more engaging tales featured
February 12, 2025
1. Dionea - Vernon Lee - 4/5
2. Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes - Oscar Wilde - 4/5
3. Sir Edmund Orme - Henry James - 3/5
4. The Mark of the Beast - Rudyard Kipling - 4/5
5. The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor - B. M. Croker - 4/5
6. Lot No. 249 - Arthur Conan Doyle - 4/5
7. The Case of Lady Sannox - Arthur Conan Doyle - 3/5
8. Pallinghurst Burrow - Grant Allen - 4/5
9. Magic Lantern - Jean Lorrain - 1/5
10. The Spectral Hand - Jean Lorrain - 3/5
11. The Great God Pan - Arthur Machen - 3/5
12. Vaila - M. P. Shiel - 3/5
2. Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes - Oscar Wilde - 4/5
3. Sir Edmund Orme - Henry James - 3/5
4. The Mark of the Beast - Rudyard Kipling - 4/5
5. The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor - B. M. Croker - 4/5
6. Lot No. 249 - Arthur Conan Doyle - 4/5
7. The Case of Lady Sannox - Arthur Conan Doyle - 3/5
8. Pallinghurst Burrow - Grant Allen - 4/5
9. Magic Lantern - Jean Lorrain - 1/5
10. The Spectral Hand - Jean Lorrain - 3/5
11. The Great God Pan - Arthur Machen - 3/5
12. Vaila - M. P. Shiel - 3/5
May 20, 2017
The quality of writing/storytelling and plot varies wildly from one story to the other. I loved Dionea and The Great God Pan, but the one about the Bungalow felt very predictable and cliched. Overall, this is one of my favorite genres, and I'm glad that I was able to discover these stories but I admit that I skipped a couple of these stories because I couldn't get into them.
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